Review Report
AHRC Research Review
Practice-Led Research in Art, Design and Architecture
Prof Chris Rust, Sheffield Hallam University
Prof Judith IVIottram, Nottingham Trent University
Prof Jeremy Till, University of Sheffield
With support from:
Kirsty Smart
Peter Walters
Mark Elshaw
Arts Si Humanities
Research Council
Sheffield
' Hallam University
NOTTINGHAM®
TRENT UNIVERSITY
The
University
Sheffield.
Version 2: November 2007
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Contents
Review Report 1
Contents 2
1. Summary 4
2. Introduction 6
2.1 Aims of the Review 7
2.2 IVIethods 8
2.3 Definitions & Descriptions 10
2.3.1 Scope of Practice-Led Research 10
2.3.2 Defining Practice-led Research 11
2.4 History & Context 14
2.4.1 Emergence 14
2.4.2 The Institutional Landscape 17
2.4.3 The Doctoral Landscape 19
2.4.4 The Research Landscape 21
2.4.5 Conclusions 26
3. Data 28
3.1 IVIeasures of Activity 29
3.1 .1 Scale of Academic Activity 29
3.1 .2 Isolating Practice-Led Research 31
3.2 Consultations with the acadennic connnnunity 35
3.2.1 Project Group Workshops 35
3.2.2 Town Meetings 35
3.2.3 Case examples 36
3.2.4 Online Workshop 44
3.2.5 Questionnaire Surveys 48
4. Issues 57
4.1 Why? 57
4.2 Infrastructure 59
4.2.1 The effect of AHRC Funding Schemes 59
4.2.2 Doctoral Research 59
4.2.3 Full Economic Costing and practice-led research 59
4.2.4 Outcomes - Language and Meaning 60
4.3 Developing and Training Researchers 61
4.3.1 Developing Academics 61
4.3.2 Progression for Postdocs 61
4.3.3 Summary 62
4.4 The Nature of Contribution 63
4.5 Quality 65
5. Conclusions 66
5.1 Scope and Quality of Practice-Led Research 66
5.2 Capacity 67
5.3 Funding Schennes 67
5.4 Definitions of Research 67
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
5.5 Infrastructure 68
5.6 RAE2008 68
5.7 Other Observations 68
6. Bibliography 70
Appendices, including much of the data and other materials collected
in the review, are provided in a separate document
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
1. Summary
You don't need to design in order to deliver liigli-quality researcli, for
example, into other people's designing, into the efficacy and desirability of
products, or into the effectiveness of newly devised design guidelines.
But Where's the continuity, sense, satisfaction, or empowerment in that for
a design graduate?
Owain Pedgley
The logic comes after the event. After the rendezvous, as Duchamp would
have it, the co-efficient of the gesture (object?) and its interpretation
Katy Macleod
This review report sets out the outcomes of a 10 month investigation to
describe the landscape of practice-led research in Art, Design and
Architecture (ADA) in the UK and beyond. We were asked for a qualitative
review but of course it has been important to gather some numbers to
check and illustrate our observations. We have consulted widely, both face
to face and in the virtual world, with experts and novices in the UK and
around the world. We have tried to strike a balance between the natural
desire of our colleagues to debate the more contentious aspects of this
territory (they were never going to forgo that opportunity) and the equally
strong wish of the AHRC that we should provide a clear description of what
is happening.
We have collected some diverse examples of research and subjected them
to various examinations. We have also examined a selection of research
projects funded by AHRC and other projects by creative practitioners,
funded by a non-research organisation.
From all this we have been able to describe the landscape in a
straightforward sense: We have measures of the proportions of ADA
academics involved in practice-led research. We have clarified differences
in the ways that the different ADA disciplines engage with practice-led
research and identified some problems that indicate possible future support
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
Strategies. We have discussed some problems with general definitions of
research and identified issues that should be addressed to ensure that the
AHRC definition can be applied to the full range of practice-led research.
We have picked out some specific case examples that illustrate the range
of contexts, methods and contributions made by practice-led researchers,
and more are described in detail in Appendix F. We have also sought to
assess how this research relates to the wider international picture in which
the UK appears to have a strong position in both volume and development
of research
We have also set out some issues that affect this community of researchers:
What strengths and weaknesses have we observed and where is there a
need to support development? Do the AHRC definition of research and
guidance on practice-led research provide an effective framework?
We have illustrated the state of development of research in ADA, and some
reasons why it is less robust than might be expected from such long-
established disciplines.
We recommend that the career path of researchers in ADA needs some
attention and make some suggestions about how that could be achieved.
We have also indicated some areas of inquiry that might be supported to
advance the theory and methods of practice-led research. In particular we
have come to the conclusion that conventional ideas of contribution to
knowledge or understanding may not be serving us well. This is significant
to fine artists but we believe that it relevant across ADA and a shared effort
to develop appropriate new models would be a constructive development.
The full set of recommendations can be found in chapter 5
Finally, this project has generated a great deal of data, far more than we
can reasonably deal with in the time available and some of the questions
that we had hoped to address remain unanswered. Given the strong
interest and enthusiastic support we have received from the ADA
community and the weight of material that people have provided, we will be
looking at ways to sustain and continue to exploit this resource to support
the development of practice led research in ADA and beyond.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
2. Introduction
This section provides some background to the project and its subject matter.
It sets out the aims of the project commissioned by the AHRC.
It outlines the methods we have used and how they have contributed to the
review
It describes the scope of the research that we have reviewed and some of
the ways that practice-led research is defined and described.
It provides a short history of relevant aspects of the development of Art,
Design & Architecture (ADA) as academic disciplines and describes some
of the contemporary issues affecting the research.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
2.1 Aims of the Review
The aims set out by AHRC in commissioning this review are:
a) map in broad terms research being carried out across the specified
subject areas, to identify likely future developments, and to situate this
research in relation to AHRC-funded research in these areas
b) contextualize the research being undertaken within the wider disciplinary
matrix, for example with reference to practice-led research in music and the
performing arts.
c) contextualise the research currently being undertaken within an
appropriate historical timeframe
d) to assess the overall health of the subject areas in terms of the current
capacity and capability for delivering research
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
2.2 Methods
The methods adopted include both gathering and analysing data from a
variety of sources, and a wide range of consultations with members of the
research community, including gathering and analysing case examples of
practice-led research. The practical work has included:
Literature Review
There is a substantial body of published work on the subject although most
is selective in attending to aspects of the picture or particular paradigms of
research with the wider concept of practice-led research. This is balanced
by some exceptional theoretical contributions although these tend to lack
grounding in relevant practice of research. The literature review is not
presented as a separate section, it informs the whole report and footnotes
have been used to expand on the relevance of some sources. The
bibliography includes sources that are of value as background material as
well as those directly cited.
Data Review
We have consulted a range of sources including the AHRC's own project
records. There are very few issues that can be resolved by attention to a
single source or as precisely as one would hope, but we have been able to
triangulate sources to arrive at a description of the institutional landscape
and to identify some significant and relevant aspects of ADA research and
practice-led research.
Worl<shiops
We held a number of workshops of the wider project group in the earlier
stages to refine the questions that we were addressing to the community
and the case examples we gathered. We also held a concluding workshop
in September 2006 to explore issues arising from the Fine Art community
and this was productive in isolating a key issue for the future as well as
gathering some informed reflections on issues identified in the review.
Town Meetings
We held two town meetings early on in the review to gather in experiences,
issues and concerns and ask colleagues to help us identify the questions
that might be applied to case examples. These meetings were very well
attended by a full range of academics and produced a rich set of questions,
informing the scalar questions applied to case examples as well as helping
us understand the field more generally.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
Case Examples
We have reviewed three sources. Case examples submitted by colleagues
have allowed us to investigate the nature of practice led research and pick
out some characteristics, including factors that differentiate the disciplines.
Examples from AHRC have allowed us to observe some quality issues, see
how approaches have matured in the period since 1998 and see the effects
of the different AHRC funding schemes. They have also provided some
statistical data to support the data analysis above.
Examples from NESTA, together with some examples observed informally
through other work by members of the review group, have allowed us to
look at the research aspect of advanced professional/creative practice
undertaken outside the research arena.
Online Workshop
Our three week online workshop, using a JlSCmail list set up for the
purpose, allowed us to investigate the attitudes and experience of the
research community in the UK and around the world (59 people took an
active part in the discussion and more than 200 joined the audience). We
used a set of four over-arching questions and some invited contributions
form experts to stimulate the moderated debate which resulted in a great
volume of discursive material and a set of useful summaries by participants.
This was an important source of opinions and experiences that informed
our discussion of issues.
Questionnaires
Towards the end of the review we used online questionnaires to direct
specific questions to individual researchers (Research Experience
Questionnaire) and research leaders (Institutional survey) these were used
to clarify and triangulate some of the data we had and to explore specific
questions, such as the development of PhD studies. The research
experience survey was very productive with 248 responses. The
institutional survey received a relatively small response (19) but the results
were sufficiently clear to triangulate other sources and there were a number
of descriptions of experience which were valuable in illustrating the issues.
Our perception is that both surveys represent the experience of the more
active and experienced members of the academic community rather than
the general picture.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
2.3 Definitions & Descriptions
There are circumstances where the best or only way to shed light on a
proposition, a principle, a material, a process or a function is to attempt to
construct something, or to enact something, calculated to explore,
embody or test it.
Bruce Archer (1995)
Their definition of Disegno covered "1: careful or diligent search [through
sketching towards a solution] 2: studious inquiry or examination;
especially: investigation or experimentation aimed at the discovery and
interpretation of facts, revision of accepted theories or laws in the light of
new facts, or practical application of such new or revised theories or laws
[through Pythagoric and Euclidean geometries] 3: the collecting of
information about a particular subject [through thorough observation
drawing of ruins, corpses, other academicians drawings, etc]
Eduardo Corte-Real
describing the 16th Century design schools of Florence and Rome
2.3.1 Scope of Practice-Led Research
The professional disciplines of art, design and architecture have many
differences but all share a tradition of situating learning and scholarship in a
professional practice setting. "Practice-led research" can be thought of as a
natural extension of this principle since many academics in these fields see
practice as the natural arena for inquiry and the methods of practice as
methods of inquiry.
The expression, "practice-led", does not describe a single set of ideas
about research. Its meaning varies with discipline, location and person and
it varies with the questions that are investigated. Its value is to indicate
research practices, emerging from Art, Design & Architecture (ADA) and
other creative disciplines, that complement methods of inquiry adopted
from the humanities and sciences. In time, as those practices become more
widely understood and established, that labelling function may become
redundant.
Because of this fluidity, this review has not been restricted to a particular
sub-set of the research in our disciplines. There are few areas where
practice does not have some part to play in methods of inquiry and
relatively few inquiries by "practitioner" academics that do not employ or
investigate some aspect of practice. In some respects, therefore, this
review examines all research in our disciplines, although it attends mainly
to the questions that arise from the emergence of practice-led research.
However there are some vexatious questions about the nature of practice-
led research which are evident particularly in Fine Art, although they are
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
relevant to all disciplines. In 4.4 we have isolated an important issue, the
nature of outcome or contribution in some work that leans heavily on
creative practice, and discussed how methods and practices might be
developed in response.
2.3.2 Defining Practice-ied Researcti
We have not identified any established or accepted prior definition of
practice-led research. Many commentators point to the difficulty of defining
it^ and some, including AHRC, set out some conditions to be met by
practice-led research^ without attempting a definition. Where we have
encountered confident assertions of the nature of practice-led research
these have often been quite specialised, describing only a part of the
spectrum of work that we have observed across ADA.
Given this lack, and given the wide scope of the topic that we have
indicated above, we have adopted a basic definition which says little but is
inclusive and does set a boundary, albeit a wide one:
Researchi in wiiicii tiie professional and/or creative practices of art,
design or archiitecture piay an instrumental part in an inquiry.
This is not to say that practice is a method of research or, as some assert,
a methodology^. Practice is an activity which can be employed in research,
the method or methodology must always include an explicit understanding
of how the practice contributes to the inquiry and research is distinguished
from other forms of practice by that explicit understanding.
In 1993 Christopher Frayling adapted Herbert Read's model of education
through art to describe different ways of thinking about research"^. He noted
that research could be FOR practice, where research aims are subservient
to practice aims, THROUGH practice, where the practice serves a research
purpose, or INTO practice, such as observing the working processes of
others. That model has been widely cited by practice-led researchers
although, like the equally widely quoted work of Donald Schon on reflective
^ eg Durling (2002) points out that the term is widely used in art and design but has not been
defined clearly, Jenkins et al (2005b) make a similar observation about architecture.
There is some opposition to defining practice-led research arising from a fear that this
would produce a "crypto-science" that would distance it from creative practice (Colford
2005).
^ AHRC, in their guidance on Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts requires that
creative practice must be accompanied by some form of critical written analysis, implying
a reflective component to the research. Taken in isolation this may suggest to some that
creative work might be "converted" to research by a suitable accompanying text.
^ The expression "practice as research" is widely used in some fields, notably performance,
although it is not prevalent in Art, Design or Architecture.
"^ Frayling (1993). Although Frayling is widely credited with this three-part model it has also
been advanced by Bruce Archer who published it later (Archer 1995) but was reported as
describing it to academic colleagues in the 1980s (Norman, Heath & Pedgley 2000)
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
practice, it has been easier to use it as a touchstone than to work through
its theoretical implications for the individual researcher's project.
Within the very broad description we have adopted, it is possible to
describe some forms of practice-led research. One approach is to propose
that a design or artwork can provide new insights, leading to the principle
that an exhibition or other public result of practice may have the same role
as a journal article^. This approach has some characteristics in common
with other research - there is a purposeful process of production, which
may include experiments or other investigations, followed by a form of peer
review. However it can become problematic, for example if it is not clear
whether the peer reviewers (eg curators or critics) are party to the research
agenda or assessing the work from some other standpoint entirely. There is
also a difficulty if the results of the research are not recorded and
transmitted in some relevant permanent form.
This leads us to the role of writing in practice-led research. A number of
commentators have discussed the balance of weight or importance
between practice and text^ but this kind of thinking is counter-productive as
it deflects attention from the central issue of how the researcher can best
resolve the research problem that they have taken on. Others argue that
artefacts or practice should not necessarily require interpretation in text if
they are understood by peers^ but these arguments also tend to sidestep
the need for a researcher to take responsibility for work being understood
and "read" appropriately. Most creative practice has the potential to be read
in many ways and the location of an artefact (eg in an art gallery) can
undermine the researcher's intentions.^
A more purposeful approach^, clearly making practice subservient to
research, proposes that any definition of practice-led research should
concentrate on how issues, concerns and interests can be examined and
brought out by production of an artefact. In a research setting, the
knowledge associated with the artefact is more significant than the artefact
itself.^°
^ eg Watanabe (2003) writing about practice-led doctoral research in Japan and Britain.
^ Hockey and Allen-Collinson (2000) suggest that text and artefact should reflect each other
and be inter-related, implying that both have an independent life rather than serving the
research. There are many examples of percentages being applied to the contribution of
each element, generally 50% artefact and 50% text and we have heard doctoral students
describe their work as 50% practice and 50% theory.
^ Candlin (2000a, 2000b) has argued that text should not be required to explain visual
material and Evans and LeGrice (2001), among others, have pointed to mathematics as a
discipline which uses its own "language". However Friedman (2006) has argued that
mathematics is a different case since it has a shared unambiguous formal language.
^ Lyons (2006) has argued that it can be extremely difficult to conduct research in an art
school setting dominated by the discourses and expectations of professional practice.
^ Makela (2005)
^° Scrivener (2000)
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
A set of requirements from another professional field, education, gives a
fuller prescription: Research should be believable, plausible and authentic;
contribute to knowledge by, for example, adding to what is known by
providing greater clarity to the field; being clear in design and dissemination
through careful and systematic approaches; match legal and ethical criteria
and use paradigm-dependent criteria^\ For the "creative" disciplines such
language can be problematic as it implies a degree of pre-determination
and precision that does not sit comfortably with the uncertain and open-
ended nature of creative practice. The expression "The Science of
Uncertainty" has been used to describe design^^, expressing both the need
to develop a rigorous framework for knowledge and the principle that
designers deal with problems that do not have predictable or optimal
solutions and may even resist description^^. In creative disciplines, practice-
led research methods must take account of this tension and allow for
uncertainty and open-endedness if the practice in the research is to be
valid.
^^ Furlong and Oancea (2005)
^^ Clive Dilnot (1998) used this as the title of a significant paper that launched an
international debate on Doctoral Education in Design that continues, in both formal and
informal arenas, today.
^^ Horst Rittel's concept of the wicked problem (Rittel and Webber,1973) provides a widely
accepted framework for these issues, Jeff Conklin (2005) paraphrases one of Rittel's
principles as, "you don't know the problem until you have found the solution"
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Arcliitecture
2.4 History & Context
2.4.1 Emergence
We do not wish to engage in unreasonable special pleading for our
disciplines, and we have noted the impatience expressed by some policy
makers when they have perceived this to be happening. However there are
some aspects of our history that help to explain why research in ADA is a
relatively late developer despite our long history of professional education.
One of the distinguishing features of the Art and Design disciplines in the
UK, paralleled in some other countries, is the particular institutional path
they have followed until very recently. As shown in the timeline (Fig 2-1
overleaf) the great majority of Art and Design provision until 1992 took
place outside universities and the academic culture that developed in
universities during the 20^^ century had little impact on the "art school"
sector^^. Architecture was included in the subjects taught in universities
from the 1840s onwards and has been part of the mainstream university
sector since then although it has a more substantial presence in the "art
school" environment as well.
Although many art schools became part of the Polytechnic system in the
1970s and developed CNAA degrees, most other disciplines in the
Polytechnics already had one foot in the university sector and for them,
arguably, the shift to university status in 1992 was not a fundamental
challenge to the way that academics worked or perceived their roles. For
Art and Design the period following 1992 has brought some dramatic
changes and in many ways Art and Design can still be seen as emergent
academic disciplines despite their long history. This is less true for
Architecture but it shares a number of problems and issues with Art and
Design.
^"^ There are a small number of distinguished exceptions, particularly Fine Art Depts in some
Universities, but these were not of a scale to influence the mainstream culture in Art and
Design.
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1840
1860
1880
1900
1920
1940
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
UK Schools of Art & Design
Many Art Schools join Polytechnics
Polytechnics become
Universities
First UK Schools of Architecture
eg 1841 , Bartlett School of Architecture UCL
First "Redbrick" Universities
(Including Architecture Depts
Diploma in Art
& Design
RCA moves to
postgrad study
CNAA Degrees in
Art & Design
Small number of CNAA
PhDs in Art & Design
Growth of Art & Design
PhD Studies
RAE QR funding available to
all A&D institutions
AHRB/AHRC
Design Research Society
Kings Fund
Bed Project
Design
Methods
Movement
"2nd Wave" of design research
thinking (still a minority interest)
Intl. Assoc
of Societies
of Design
Research
Fig 2-1. Separate development of Art and Design Disciplines
One aspect of this emergence is the relationship between the
professions and the academy. The subjects have been focused on
preparation for professional life^^, many teachers are professional
practitioners employed on the basis of professional achievements, and
the dominant model for advancement of the disciplines is through the
work of leading practitioners who are well-known personalities.
The idea that professionals might look to university academics for new
ideas or knowledge is a novel one. For example the idea of post-
modernism has been developed and debated widely across academia
but many designers had their introduction to the term through the radical
concept designs developed by the architect and product designer, Ettore
Sotsass, and his "Memphis" design group in the 1980s. Equally, post-
modernism in architecture has found its fullest expression in practice
rather than in the academy.
Nevertheless we have a long history of formal research, especially in
Architecture and Design, but this has been a minority activity until
recently. The Design Research Society was founded in the 1960s as a
result of the first attempts to provide a scientific foundation for designing.
The most significant design research project of the 1960s, the
development of the Kings Fund hospital bed specification by a team at
the Royal College of Art led by Bruce Archer, had a strong practical
design component to complement the scientific elements^^.
In Architecture, the 1958 Oxford Conference set the agenda for a
research-based approach to architecture following which Cambridge
University's Martin Centre pioneered an approach that combined
analytical methods with exemplary design proposals.
From that time there has been a sustained research effort to develop the
theory of designing and architects have played an important role in that
project during the second half of the 20th Century^^. However in Art,
formal enquiry into the discipline was largely the preserve of Art History,
with theories of art-making taking a promotional role in the professional
^^ The notion of professional life as an artist is more fluid than in other areas of life. Many
artists continue to characterise themselves as such despite never making art practice
their principle source of income. A longtitudinal study of craft graduates (Press &
Cusworth, 1998) demonstrated that they had complex careers taking on a diversity of
roles but it could be seen that, over time, they developed work which was both at a
level appropriate for graduates and exploited their education and skills as creative
practitioners, although not usually in the discipline studied for their first degrees.
^^ Ghislaine Lawrence (2003) has provided a full description of this project and
discussed many aspects of the early developments in Design Research.
^^ Leading figures include Christopher Alexander, Nigel Cross and Bryan Lawson. Henrik
Gedenryd (1998, Chap2) describes several of the models of designing developed by
the Design Methods movement and work done subsequently in the "2nd wave" of
Design Methods research in the 1970s and 1980s.
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
arena as the preserve of the art critics or of the spokespeople of art's
'isms'.
However these developments involved a small minority of academics.
Until 1992 most of their colleagues gave little thought to research and,
even today, the concept of advanced research that contributes to the
knowledge in the discipline is not widely understood, especially by
practitioners who generally equate "research" with information gathering
to support practice.
The first stimulus to the main body of ADA academics was the Research
Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the funding which it released to some
institutions to develop their research and this is the point where
"practice-led" research became a significant issue. The debate on
practice-led research has always been characterised by, on the one
hand, a proper wish to develop appropriate forms of inquiry for ADA and
other "creative" disciplines and, on the other hand, a more naive set of
concerns and ideas expressed by those with less experience.
We will return to the theme of emergence later when we examine the
data we have collected and the issues that we have identified in the
review.
2.4.2 The Institutional Landscape
As already indicated, ADA departments operate in a variety of
environments and the mix, as well as the numbers, is relevant.
Before 1992, 12 Universities had Architecture departments. A small
number included Fine Art or Design. Recently some pre-1992
universities have developed or incorporated art and design depts but
these are still a small part of the UK total.
Specialist Art Colleges (monotechnics) form a significant part of the
provision for Art and Design and some of them have Architecture Depts.
These range in scale from small colleges with less than 500 students to
the University of the Arts London, one of the largest HEIs in the UK with
28,000 students. There has been a general tendency for monotechnics
to merge into larger units, the most recent being the merger of Kent and
Surrey Institutes of Art and Design to form the University College for the
Creative Arts.
The monotechnics generally have been successful in sustaining the "art
school" identity and asserting the distinctiveness of their provision and
they have a strong reputation outside the UK. Some have been
particularly successful in developing postgraduate education and the
Royal College of Art is a solely postgraduate institution.
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Post-1992 universities are the largest component of the Art and Design
sector and also include the majority of Architecture depts. For many of
the former polytechnics, ADA depts have been important for both
research and institutional esteem because they have an opportunity to
take a leading position in their fields, and several have done so.
The 2001 RAE data gives an indication of the scale of activity and mix
across the different types of institution:
Research-active staff in
4 & 5 rated depts, UoA64 (Art and Design
Pre-92 Univ.
(FTE)
Post-92 Univ.
(FTE)
IVIonotechnic (FTE)
256
489
341
Fig 2-2. Research activity by type of institution (A&D)
This group of higher rated departments is small compared to other
AHRC disciplines. Panel 2 (Visual Arts and Media) has 62% of 4/5/5*
departments (no art and design dept is rated 5*) while the average for all
AHRC panels is 80%, The 5 highest rated panels of the 8 have 87%
The same data is not available for Architecture but we can indicate the
spread by numbers of depts.
Distribution of Archiitecture depts 2006
Pre-92 Univ. (FTE) Post-92 Univ. (FTE)
IVIonoteclinic (1- 1 L)
12 18
5
Fig 2-3. All Activity by type of institution (Architecture)
The RAE data also allows us to estimate the total number of academics
in the Art and Design sector:
Research Active
FTE
Research Active
Individuals
All Acadennics
FTE
All Acadennics
Individuals
1669
2526
3563
5394
Fig 2-4. Numbers of UK Art and Design Academics
However the "research-active" figure should be treated with caution.
Although the proportion looks healthy at 47% and indicates a vigorous
community, the proportion of staff able to take full responsibility for their
work as research is probably much lower, in the region of 20%^^
18
See note to Fig 3-4
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
By comparison with HESA student numbers it is possible to arrive at a
rough estimate of staff in the main areas of Art and Design. The
Architecture staff number was found in the RIBA Education survey 2005
Fine Art FTE Crafts FTE Design FTE Architecture FTE
Staff 738 67 2,758 760
We have provided more detailed data in 3.1 .1 (Scale of Academic
Activity)
2.4.3 The Doctoral Landscape
We are in a period of rapid development of doctoral education, partly
due to AHRC, and the picture is more robust today than even 5 years
ago. However our observations indicate that there is a considerable way
to go before Doctoral education has the same role in ADA that it has in
the majority of academic disciplines and this may be an area for further
intervention.
The period up to the 1939-45 war included important developments in
ADA education, from the formation of the original UK art schools after
1840, to the innovations by the German Bauhaus in the 1920s. However
the period since 1960 encompasses most of the developments relevant
to the contemporary landscape of scholarship.
During the 1960s the Art Schools developed a national Diploma in Art &
Design (DipAD) which was intended to be a degree-level qualification^^
but they did not provide BA degrees until the advent of the Polytechnics
and CNAA^°. The Coldstream Report of 1960^^ had established the
notional link between study of the history of art and design subjects and
studio training. Scholarship within this model remained largely the
preserve of the art and design historians who contributed to 20% of the
teaching of students on art and design studio programmes. However the
level of discussion stimulated in the post-Coldstream era, and increasing
familiarity with the models of other subject domains, did give rise to the
first doctoral studies in Art and Design.
^^Woodfield(2004)
^° Council for National Academic Awards, formed to validate degrees in the Polytechnic
sector.
^^ Produced by the National Advisory Council for Art Education chaired by Sir Henry
Coldstream who was convinced that art education needed a strong independent voice
free of the academic mainstream if it was to serve the education of young artists in the
increasingly uncertain environment of the post-war period.
Page ^ 9
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
During 1957-75, according to the Art and Design Index to Theses
(ADIT)^^, the established universities awarded 38 Doctorates, the
majority (26) in architectural subjects although the earliest award in the
database was titled Some recent British sculptors: a critical reviev/^.
Despite this start there were only 4 Fine Art theses in this first period and
no evidence of practice in research.
PhDs 1975-1985 100 awards After 1975, (first CNAA thesis recorded in ADIT), PhD's started to
risealch"''^ ""* practice-led become a part of the landscape within the Art and Design Schools.
From 1976 to 1985, ADIT records 100 PhDs awarded. 44 of these were
in architectural subjects, 21 in Art and 35 in Design. Among the 100
ADA PhDs in ADIT awarded between 1976 and 1985, only 23 were
awarded by the CNAA^^
1985-1995 saw a growing awareness of the opportunity to engage in
doctoral study. From 1992 access improved when the former
polytechnics gained the power to award their own degrees^^. The
opportunity to include the outcomes of creative practice as part of a
doctoral submission had been established by the CNAA in the late
1970's, and this became part of the regulations of many new
universities after 1992.
During 1986 to 1995, the outcomes of practice were important
components in only 2 PhDs in the Art field^^ but 7 of the 40 awards
appear to fall within the Frayling notion of research 'through' practice
with experimental methods providing the dominant strategy for
investigation. Apart from these 7, all fit the model of research into
practice. 5 investigate processes of making art or the media used, and
the remaining 28 Art PhDs are historical, anthropological or education-
orientated studies. The majority of these (21) continue to come from the
'old' universities that generally did not have established studio practice
programmes within their portfolio.
The ADIT data does not include every PhD awarded but, more important, it is the only
source which describes and categorises Doctorates in a reliable and consistent way.
By contrast HESA data appears to indicate a greater number of awards in recent
years but HESA subject boundaries do not fit this review.
^^ Chew, B. A., Some recent British sculptors: a critical review (University of Manchester,
1957)
^"^ This account draws on the analysis undertaken by Mottram & Fisher as described in
the forthcoming paper: Researching Research in Art & Design, Wonderground,
November 2006.
^^ Previously, under the CNAA system, approval of projects and supervisors was
conducted by the CNAA.
^^ A visual record of the creative practice fornns a central part of Douglas',
'Structure and Innprovisation: The Making Aspect of Sculpture', undertaken at
the University of Sunderland. Gilhespy's 'appraisal and artistic response' to
Soviet sculpture, while indicating in the abstract that one chapter docunnents
his own artistic practices, does not nnake it clear whether the sculptures
produced fornned part of the actual subnnission.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
PhDs 1996-2005
406 awards
Growing proportion of
practice-led research
From 1996 to 2005, the largest subject in the 406 PhD completions was
Art, (148) followed by Design (99) and Architecture (81)
There has been some growth in the role of practice in research, 20% of
the Art PhDs in this period appear to be investigations into the
processes of making or apprehending contemporary art practice. These
include descriptive works and those written to accompany studio work.
The ADIT abstracts are not sufficiently clear to allow accurate
judgements on the role of practice in most projects but this evidence
indicates that practice led doctoral research has grown within an
expanding field of study. The evidence from questionnaires (3.2.5) and
other consultations indicates that the proportion of practice-led doctoral
work under way today is greater than the estimate for the past 10 years.
2.4.4 The Research Landscape
Post 1945 development
As indicated earlier, UK academics took a lead in developing Design
Research from the 1960s, starting with the assertively modernist Design
Methods movement but moving quickly into a wider agenda. Bruce
Archer's work, described earlier^^, provided an early example of design
practice playing a part in a programme of inquiry, reflecting the interests
of ADA academics, who then as now, were primarily drawn from
practitioners within the field.
From 1975 to 1992, the CNAA Research Committee for Art & Design
considered the range of research and staff development activities they
would expect within Art and Design Schools. They sponsored a series of
conferences that reported on early research degrees in the field and
explored emerging issues of infrastructure and scope^^. In 1984, they
noted that it was important for lecturers to be involved in research and
related activities which infused teaching with a sense of critical enquiry.
They saw such activities as including the following:
As well as developing the specification for the Kings Fund bed using techniques drawn
from operational research, Archer's group built and tested (in a live ward) a set of
beds designed to meet their specification. This became the basis of a standard type of
bed in use throughout the NHS to the present day (Lawrence 2003). The RCA bed
was both a testbed and demonstration for the specification and a product in its own
right, licensed to several manufacturers, demonstrating the tension between product
and knowledge seen today in research that results in artefacts.
' The CNAA organised a series of conferences in the 1980s in conjunction with
Middlesex Polytechnic, 1984, Manchester Polytechnic, 1987, and the London Institute
in 1988. The conclusions from the two earlier events are reprinted in the publication of
the proceedings of the 1988 event.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Academic research, applied researcli, consultancy, professional practice,
scholarship, creative work, curriculum and pedagogic research, and the
development of applied, interdisciplinary and collaborative activities that are
responsive to industrial and community needs^^
The 1988 Matrix conference publication included a (1989) statement
from the CNAA Art & Design Committee, stating that they did not accept
creative work as legitimate scholarly activity, but recognised rapid
growth in the reporting of such activity^°. The Committee distinguished
between advanced creative work, important to the teaching of the
creative arts, and the growing interest in research degrees. There was
concern that the sector might be starting to confuse research with
creative practice but the conference revealed some sensitive
consideration of how approaches to research might develop.
The papers stressed the need to look at what we could usefully
investigate within the discipline, rather than leaving it up to people from
other disciplines to tell us about our activities.
1992
When the Polytechnics became universities, the creative work formerly
reported under the research and related activities performance indicator
of the CNAA was entered into the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise.
Brown, Gough & Roddis^^ state that a lot of the activity reported at the
1992 RAE was applied work undertaken within professional or industrial
contexts, and note that it was the sort of activity described mostly as
'professional practice'. They considered that this work tiad been
imprecisely expressed as research', as it was in fact:
...the result of applied research that had been undertaken within professional
and industrial contexts,... [that] had not, until that time, been understood or
articulated within an appropriate typology that located it within the academy
alongside other forms of knowledge.
During the 1990's discussion about the appropriate typology for locating
research and creative professional practice in ADA continued through
occasional papers, conferences, and journal articles including the three-
part model proposed by Frayling and Archer described in 2.3.2.
Susan Tebby, in a response to proposals for the1996 RAE, provided a
clear description of the elements of art and design practice that correlate
with research^^. She set out the ways in which practice is distinct from
^^ Bourgourd,et a! (1989) Appendix 4
^° Reporting of such activity would under one of the sub-headings within the report
prepared for quinquennial departmental review by the CNAA
^^ Brown, Gough & Roddis (2004) is a review of "applied research" by three art and
design research leaders who were all members of the 2001 RAE panel for Art and
Design.
^^ Tebby (1994)
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
research, differentiating between research generally being understood in
terms of goal and route and creative practice as about context & process.
What was seen to lift aspects of practice to research was its
interrogation by analysis and evaluation. She noted, but discounted, the
belief that the principles and procedures of research are those that are
likely to stifle creativity, to standardize the approach to new
discoveries....' and reiterated similarities between the practices of the
creative artist and creative scientist commented upon by Frayling.
The 1996 RAE saw a greater number of Art and Design departments
submitting outputs, working with the following definition of research:
Research for the purposes of the RAE is to be understood as original
investigation undertaken in order to gain knowledge and understanding. It
includes. ..the invention and generation of ideas, images, performances and
artefacts including design, where these lead to new or substantially improved
materials, devices, products and processes, including design and
construction...
During the late 1990's, research student numbers and research activity
increased, funded by the 1996 RAE and the new AHRB, which
increased understanding of peer review. Questions of how far practice
might be part of or lead the research process was widely debated, and
notable conferences drew on contributions by Scrivener, Douglas,
MacLeod, Durling and others, several of whom had been among the
early doctoral completions in the late 1970's and the 1980's. There was
a growing literature in the field, some of which is represented in our
bibliography.
Impact of the RAE
By 2001 , the importance of the RAE for institutions was well-understood,
but many Art and Design academics were still uncertain about how their
professional practice might become eligible as research and so provided
unclear or inappropriate evidence or claims to support their outputs.
A notable feature of RAE 2001 was the strong presence of Fine Art.
Fine Art academics make up 20% of the Art and Design population but
40% of submitted staff in the RAE. Exhibition-type outputs were the
most significant element of Fine Art submissions (80%). (A fuller
analysis of the RAE data will be found in section 3)
The RAE has had a profound effect on the research landscape in ADA
but the effects are not uniform. In art and design, and some architecture
departments within art and design faculties of monotechnics, the
opportunity to propose diverse forms of research has been taken up with
enthusiasm and has fostered a growth in interest in research and
practice-led methods. The price has been that less experienced
academics have formed some naive assumptions about what constitutes
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
advanced research and the core of academics with a robust
understanding of the problems is small as indicated in 2.4.2.
By contrast, many architecture departments, submitted to the RAE Built
Environment panel, have been discouraged from submitting practice-led
research and this has suppressed interest in, and development of,
practice-led methods in architecture.
The debate on validity of practice-led research tends to be dominated by
the question of outputs, characterised by arguments about the
admissibility of artefacts in place of conventional texts. While some of
this debate is irrelevant and promoted by relatively inexperienced
individuals, it does appear that the nature of output, or rather
contribution, may be a core issue for Fine Art in particular but also for
design and architecture to some degree. We were able to develop this
question in one of our workshops and this is reported in 4.4. (The Nature
of Contribution).
Research in Professional Practice
While the ADA academic community may have difficulties, from time to
time, in unpicking research practices from professional activities, some
leading professionals are undertaking work which can stand up to critical
examination as research. We have given the example of Ettore Sotsass
and others (2.4.2.) who set out to demonstrate the concepts of post-
modernism to both their peers and the public^^, earning recognition for
the originality of their thinking and provoking debate and a shift in
direction across their disciplines. There are many less visible examples,
some concealed because of the necessity for commercial confidentiality.
In the USA, in the 1990s, leading design organisations were borrowing
research techniques from ethnography to understand the lives and
needs of their end users long before most design academics were aware
that industry was looking for a more considered approach to the new
generation of "system" or interactive products. As well as being a new
aspect of professional practice, this work is frequently practice-led in the
sense that some designers' working practices move freely back and
forth between the creative practices of making and refining concepts and
working products and social observation practices used to investigate
the consequences of putting their developing concepts into the hands of
stakeholders.
^^ Arguably Sotsass overcomes the objections posed to other leading practitioners being
awarded the status of researchers (the Picasso's PhD debate) because he developed
his work with an explicit intention to explore post-modernism in design and he made
his work public in that context.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Examples of these approaches can be found in the work of the IDEO
group^"^ who are unusual in their willingness to publicise their methods.
Designers in the evidence-driven field of medical products and
pharmaceuticals are also developing "designerly" research practices.
Karel van der Waarde, a designer of drug packaging in Belgium, used
his (UK) PhD studies to analyse the "life-cycle" of a medicine in use and
has developed an approach to professional work that combines creative
designing and making with studies of effectiveness which turn his
professional work into exemplary practice^^. Team Consulting, a British
company designing drug dispensing products such as inhalers, describe
their practice as combining playfulness and rigour^^. They use the full
repertoire of the creative designer to invent and refine design ideas but
balance that traditional practice with continuing engagement with users
within their design environment. Both of these examples come from
designers who must convince their clients that their approach to usability
and effectiveness is as appropriate as the clinical trial methods used to
develop the medicines they package.
In Architecture there is a long tradition in the UK of carrying out research
in practice. Indeed to maintain a distinctive profile in the marketplace, it
is almost a requirement for the most innovative practices to develop new
ideas and methods through research. At one end of the scale, groups
such as Foster and Associates maintain research departments, in
Foster's case concentrating on new materials and complex geometries.
At the other end of the scale smaller emerging practices such as dRMM
(de Rijke, Marsh Morgan) or FLUID define themselves through their
original research, the former into materials, the latter into issues of
participation. However, much of this research remains tacit; it is either,
for commercial reasons, not shared with the rest of the community or
else, in its dissemination through the press, is not communicated with
the rigour it deserves. For the leading practices intellectual property is
what defines them and sustains them, and understandably they are loath
to give it away. Research goes on, but silently.
Fine Art, as the third leg of ADA, has a different character for the reason
that the great majority of Fine Art academics cross freely between the
professional and academic settings^^ and many seek to produce work
that has relevance as creative practice and also serves the academic
34 ■ 1
www.ideo.com
^^ Email conversations with C.Rust during 2006
^^ Interview with C.Rust 31/10/05
^^ It is argued, for example by Johannes Birringer in his summary of our online workshop,
(Error! Reference source not found.) that this is absolutely necessary for research
since the resources and public engagement of the professional practice environment
cannot be reproduced in most academic settings.
Page 25
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
agenda. This is both a pragmatic approach (life is too short to maintain
two separate practices) and an expression of the artist's motivation to
produce art whatever the circumstance. It is also an opportunity that has
been taken by some academics to develop new practices in the
professional environment but, with the alternative peer review framework
provided by research, free of the limitations of the market system.
Infrastructure - Dissemination
In this climate, where professionals choose to play down the research they
do or disseminate it in professional settings that lack the particular critical
rigour of an academic journal, it is not surprising that the ADA subjects
suffer from a lack of the kind of scholarly publishing infrastructure that is
taken for granted in most disciplines and this is very clear from the RAE
2001 data for three "synthetic" disciplines:
Refereed Journal Outputs in RAE 2001
General Engineering Built Environnnent Art & Design
93% 60% 9%
This situation is underscored by analysis of journal articles submitted in
Art and Design - 820 papers were submitted from almost 500 journals. In
one way this underscores the interdisciplinarity of the research, since
these journals represent a great diversity of subject domains where
designers, in particular, had contributed to research. But from the
perspective of building a scholarly infrastructure it indicates that Art and
Design academics, and those architects who seek to develop practice-
led research, are not in control of their own destiny, especially as the
gatekeepers for other forms of output - exhibitions, products in
manufacture, buildings etc - are rarely motivated by research criteria.
This problem cannot be wished away, interdisciplinarity puts a limit on
the proportion of discipline-specific publishing that can be developed^^
and artists are determined to use modes of dissemination that do not
compromise their creative practice. However design and architecture are
developing some new research publications and we indicate (4.4) an
agenda for considering the problem of contribution in Fine Art research.
2.4.5 Conclusions
The landscape of research in ADA has seen considerable development
in recent years including growth in doctoral research and practice-led
research. There is some thoughtful engagement in mapping typologies
^^ One leading design theorist, Richard Buchanan (1992), has suggested that design is
the "last liberal art" implying that we need to sustain its breadth and applicability to
many contexts, rather than seeking to close it into a disciplinary ghetto.
Page 26
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
to describe approaches to activity and some ongoing confusion about
the point at which creative practice becomes valid as a research activity,
despite a number of models for locating creative practice within a
research context. In Fine Art some still see the outcome of artistic
practice as the prime objective of creative 'research'. Art outputs via
exhibition dissemination continue to dominate the field, but it is uncertain
to what extent these are then entering into the cycle of reference and
citation that forms the bedrock of scholarly activity. Professional
practitioners engage in some valid research but do not tend to share
their inquiries with their peers and they do not, generally, recognise the
role of the academy in developing the field. ADA Academics lack a
coherent publishing infrastructure but interdisciplinarity sets a limit on the
degree to which such an infrastructure might develop.
Page 27
3.
Data
This section provides an overview of the data collected, including statistics
from existing sources, results from our own surveys, experts' experience
and opinions and observations from our engagement with the academic
community. It also describes the main data-gathering activities.
It includes key statistical data and outlines of the qualitative data that is
covered in more detail in the appendices
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
3.1 Measures of Activity
3.1.1 Scale of Academic Activity
RAE 2001 provides a guide to the number of staff in Art and Design and,
to some extent, in Architecture^^. We have assumed that numbers today
will be broadly the same, although there is some growth in these subjects
this may be offset by changes in staff/student ratios.
Types of Institution
The first chart indicates the spread in research activity between the three
types of art and design institution discussed in 2.4.2. (The Institutional
Landscape). It is based on staff numbers in leading research depts.
Research-active staff
in 4 & 5 rated depts, UoA64 (Art and Design) 2001
Pre-92 Univ.
(FTE)
Post-92 Univ.
(FTE)
IVIonoteciinic (1- 1 L)
256
489
341
Fig 3-1. Research activity by type of institution (A&D)
The same data is not available for Architecture but it is possible to indicate
the distribution by numbers of depts.
Distribution of Archiitecture depts 2006
Pre-92 Univ. (FTE) Post-92 Univ. (FTE)
IVIonoteciinic (h 1 L)
12 18
5
Fig 3-2. All Activity by type of institution (Architecture)
it is difficult to isolate Architecture from Built Environment in in the RAE and some other
sources
Page 29
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Here is the Art and Design data in more detail
Rating Pre-92 University (FTE) Post-92 University (FTE) l\/lonotechnic (FTE)
Goldsmiths College (49)
Open University (14)
Reading (Typography) (9)
UCL (23)
Bournemouth (7)
Brighton (54)
City University (3)
Sheffield Hallam (26)
University of Wales College,
Newport (7)
Ulster (33)
The London Institute (141)
Royal College of Art (48)
Brunei (30)
Loughborough (35)
Newcastle (9)
Oxford (8)
Southampton (21)
Dundee (58)'°
UCE (40)
Coventry (Design) (8)
De Montfort (54)
East London (14)
Manchester Met (28)
Northumbria (45)
Kingston (16)
Staffordshire (26)
Sunderland (29)
UWE (22)
Westminster (32)
University of Wales"^^ Institute,
Cardiff (35)
Wimbledon (40)
Edinburgh (46)
Glasgow (66)
Fig 3-3. 4 and 5 rated institutions in RAE 2001 - Art and Design
Numbers of staff
From the RAE 2001 data it is possible also to estimate the number of
academics in Art and Design, since the RAE results indicate the
proportion of research active staff in each dept. These are the numbers for
the whole sector, indicating that 47% of academics are "research active"
in terms of the RAE. However the proportion of academics with the
experience to undertake independent research in terms of the AHRC's
remit is probably much lower at around 20%^^
Research Active
FTE
Research Active
Individuals
All Academics All
FTE Academics
Individuals
1669
2526
3563
5394
Fig 3-4. No of Academics in Art and Design in 2001
Strictly speaking Dundee University should be regarded as a post-1992 University for art
and design since it incorporated Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in 1994.
^^ UWIC and UWC Newport have been included here since they were part of the non-
university sector before 1992 and have a great deal of autonomy within University of
Wales.
"^^ This is a very sensitive issue. To test it we contacted the heads of research in 5
institutions, in confidence (several others were unwilling to comment), and asked for an
estimate of the proportion of their staff who would be able to take responsibility for
postdoctoral research in AHRC terms. They agreed that this was a much lower figure
than the numbers submitted to the RAE and their average estimate was 20% of staff.
Page 30
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Fewer Art and Design
depts (in AHRC panel 2)
have high RAE ratings
and they have half the
number of professors
compared to other AHRC
disciplines
The division of Art and Design academics between disciplines can be
estimated from the HESA undergraduate data if we assume that staff
student ratios are similar. The number of Architecture academics cannot
be calculated from RAE data but the overall academic numbers are
available from the RIBA Education Survey 2005.
Fine Art FTE
Crafts FTE
Design FTE Architecture FTE
Students^^
13,500
1,205
50,425 (11,285)
Staff
738
67^^
2,758 760
Fig 3-5. Estimate of academic numbers across ADA
Comparison with othier discipiines
AHRC provide some data which compares Panel 2 disciplines (Visual Arts
and Media) with the whole of their domain"^^ and gives some indications of
a less developed research culture.
62% of Panel 2 academics work in RAE 4/5/5* depts compared to an
average of 80%. No Art and Design departments received a 5* rating in
RAE 2001 . A similar picture is presented by the other main "creative"
group in panel 8 (Music & Performing Arts) with 61% in RAE 4/5/5*
There is evidence in the mix of staff too. While panel 2 depts have similar
numbers of junior (L) staff to the average they have half the number of
Professors (10%) compared to the average (20%)
3.1.2 Isolating Practice-Led Research
As we have indicated in the introduction, there are no clear boundaries to
practice-led research and we do not think it would be possible to arrive at
an uncontested measure of the amount of practice-led research activity in
the different disciplines. However it is important to establish the scale of
activity in general terms at least.
The data we have reviewed indicates that practice-led research is a
significant part of the research in these disciplines, particularly in Fine Art,
where it is the greater part of the activity. As with other questions, data for
Architecture is more difficult to isolate.
Source: HESA undergraduate enrolment data for 2004-05
"^"^ Generally the information about Crafts and Applied arts is confusing and it is difficult to
determine whether some activity is concealed within Design or even Fine Art
"^^ AHRC Performance Management Scorecard: 2005/06.
( http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/about/deliverv plan.asp )
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
RAE - non-text outputs
68% of Art & Design
3% of Built Environment
Presence in RAE
To start with the 2001 RAE data, an analysis of types of output indicates
that 68% of submitted outputs in Art and Design are in forms that give a
strong indication of being practice led (eg exhibition or product). This is a
useful indicator of large scale activity but it must be noted that, on the
one hand many practice-led design projects result in conventional
publications and on the other hand the RAE rules allow a wider range of
activity to be included than AHRC would regard as research in its terms.
In Built Environment, which includes Architecture, 3% of RAE outputs
are in forms that indicate practice-led research but some Architecture
outputs were included in Art and Design submissions.
AHRC Awards
105 of 666
indicate "practice-led"
Actual ratio is probably at
least 200 of 666
AHRC Award
case examples
52 of 75
were "practice-led"
Research funded by AHRC
More detailed information is available from work funded by AHRC/AHRB.
We examined records of projects in the period 1998-2006 and identified
666 projects in areas that include the practice of Art, Design or
Architecture. The main schemes are Research Grants, Fellowships,
Research Leave and Small Grants in the Creative and Visual Arts.
Some schemes, at some times, have asked applicants to indicate that
the work is "Practice-Led" but this data was not collected consistently
during the period we examined. Nevertheless 105 successful applicants
have indicated that they see their research as practice-led and, given
that a large proportion were not asked, and others may have overlooked
the question^^, this indicates that a substantial proportion of this activity,
possibly even a majority, is practice-led in some way.
It was not possible to examine the disciplinary split across the full set of
data since a great many projects from earlier years are listed under a very
broad category of "Visual Arts". However we have analysed the data for a
substantial sub-set where a rough indication of discipline is available, as
well as reviewing a smaller set of projects in greater detail, including a
qualitative analysis.
To start with the smallest set, where we are completely confident that we
are examining practice-led work, a group of 75 successful funding
applications were inspected, chosen to provide a spread of subject
category and scheme. Of these, 52 (70%)were found to include a
significant element of practice in their methods and were analysed in
detail as described in 3.2.3.
Until recently an answer was not required and it is not clear whether a missing answer is
a negative or a non-response
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
The practice disciplines represented in the case examples were:
Projects
Total value £
Average Value £
Fine Art
32
1 ,875,249
58,602
Applied Arts
7
400,560
57,223
Design
9
790,452
87,828
Architecture^^
Others^'
4
99,263
24,816
Totals
52
3,165,523
60,875
All ADA Awards
666
28,740,641
43,154
All Awards^'
1573
74,962,291
47,656
Fig 3-6. Subject distribution ofAHRC award case examples
Our main observation is that Fine Art is heavily represented and the
average value of projects is in the same general region for the three main
groups. The average value is higher than the average for all awards and
this is probably because small grant awards are under-represented in our
sample.
Here is the same analysis of all awards where Art, Design and
Architecture can be distinguished from the AHRC categories. It shows a
generally similar picture:
Projects
Total value £
Average Value £
Fine Art
100
5,545,836
55,458
Applied Arts
10
394,982
39,498
Design
45
2,186,517
48,589
Architecture
16
1 ,477,629
92,352
Totals
171
9,604,964
56,169
All ADA Awards
666
28,740,641
43,154
All Awards
1573
74,962,291
47,656
Projects
Total value E
Average Value £
Fig 3-7. Distribution of AHRC awards between ADA subjects
Again Fine Art has a large proportion of the funding, the Applied Arts
figure may be lower because this is not a well-defined category - in the 52
case examples we were able to identify applied arts/crafts projects that
may not be categorised as such in the data. Architecture is present in this
set but the biggest elements in the architecture group are 2 resource
The sample included Architecture projects but the proportion was small and none were
in the practice-led category.
' "Others" were examples of curatorial practice and investigations into technical process
relevant to a wide range of creative disciplines. Generally it was not straightforward to
isolate the disciplines since the boundaries are blurred and the professional orientation
of the researcher may not be straightforward.
* This global figure appears to include a number of duplicate records so the actual total
will be lower than this but of the same order.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
enhancement projects and 8 research grants, the titles of which indicate
that they investigate history (7) or methods (1) and are not practice-led.
Uptake ofAHRC schemes
Fine Art awards Using the subset of awards where discipline can be identified from the
j^eave AHRC category, we examined the pattern of awards to see how different
^maii Gr disciplines used the main AHRC schemes. The pie charts on the left
indicate the big difference between Fine Art and the other ADA disciplines
in take-up of the various ARHC schemes, with Fine art having a strong
emphasis on Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts.
Research
Grahts
Other disciplines
Research Leave
Small Grants
Research Grants
Fellowships
Fine Art
586,476
156,556
1,342,473
2,596,067
Applied Arts
36,493
204,789
Design
62,650
10,185
1,258,404
Arciiitecture
56,577
5,340
880,293
141,480
Other sources
The literature review, which includes some partial surveys of practice-led
research, also indicates that practice-led research is a significant
presence, accounting for more than half of activity in some areas,
especially in Fine Art^°.
' For example London Institute (now the University of the Arts, London), the largest
provider of Art and Design postgraduate education in the UK, had 135 PhD students in
2003, more than half of whom were engaged in practice-led research. At one of the
London Institute Colleges (Chelsea), 19 of 22 PhD projects were practice-led.
(Watanabe 2003)
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
3.2 Consultations with the academic community
3.2.1 Project Group Workshops
Workshops were small group events, with invited participants who were
experienced academics, including members of the wider project group.
The initial project group workshops did not generate any significant data in
themselves but were used to first identify questions and issues to be
explored in the consultation and later to identify and clarify the questions
to be used in collecting and analysing case examples. That is described
and explained in 3.2.2. and 3.2.3. below.
A further workshop was held towards the end of the project, with
participants from fine art, to explore issues raised, in all our consultations,
by academics who feel that existing paradigms of research are not helpful
for their work. Throughout the consultation we were aware of this problem
but it was difficult to address in an open arena, such as the online
conference, which included a relatively large number of inexperienced
researchers.
This workshop produced a large amount of material drawing on the
experience of participants and informing our discussion of issues and our
recommendations. This is summarised in Appendix B. It also developed a
position on the nature of outputs and contributions which we believe to be
an important clarification and this is discussed in 4.4. {The Nature of
Contribution)
3.2.2 Town Meetings
Town meetings were large events, held early in the project, open to all
interested parties. They were well-attended by a wide range of
researchers ranging from Deans and Heads of Research Centres to PhD
students. They served two purposes: to allow participants to record and
discuss issues and problems and to gather in ideas for the questions that
might be applied to examples of practice led research, to inform the
mapping work.
These meetings, and the conclusions drawn by the review group in project
meetings to analyse the debate, are summarised in Appendix A.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
3.2.3 Case examples
We sampled three sets of case examples. Project descriptions sent in by
contributors, examples of AHRC funded projects and projects funded
outside the research environment by NESTA^^
The examples submitted by members of the community were collected via
our website. As well as asking for descriptions of the projects under
several headings that relate to the AHRC and other frameworks for
research, and images that indicate the nature of the work, we asked a
series of scalar questions designed to locate the work against ideas about
practice-led research developed in our workshops and Town Meetings.
Cases from the community
The topics for these 38 examples were diverse, including textile design,
software development, CAD and physical modelling methods, innovation
culture, children's obesity, musical instruments, polymer technology,
pornography, communication disabilities, telematic art, historic glass
techniques, relationship between graphics and creative writing in book
production and relationship between school architecture and pedagogy.
The full account of each case can be found in Appendix F. Apart from two
examples where it was not clear what role practice took in the inquiry, the
case examples all appeared to be valid as practice-led research.
The outcomes and methods were also diverse. Wolfgang Jonas provided
two examples of developing operational models for small companies
where the professional practice involved was itself a good example of
research-led designing. Jonas is one of the few international examples
and a distinguished figure whose references range from his background
as a craft-led designer in former East Germany to work in contemporary
industrial settings.
Daria Loi, an Italian designer who studied for a PhD in Australia and has
gone on to work in the USA for Intel, has developed research that
explores the needs of collaborative practices, embodying the research in
a famously "designed" thesis in which a diverse collection of materials,
developing the concept of cultural probes, are packed into a suitcase
intended to provide an engaging means to explore the theories and
practices she has developed.
As a complete contrast to these "industrial" examples, Jill Gibbon employs
drawing as a method of reportage, operating as a participant observer in
political action as a peace campaigner. Her research includes an
examination of the reception of this work, in both mainstream and
^^ National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
"alternative" media, in relation to discourses of contemporary and
historical war reportage. She also analyses her own experience as the
"reporter" in the light of a critical reading of the notion of "witness" in war
art and reportage and is seeking to contribute to both art theory and the
practice of visual reportage. The drawings produced during the research
have been shortlisted for a Jerwood prize indicating a high level
contribution to practice and gainsaying the fears of those individuals who
imagine that engaging in academic inquiry might undermine their ability to
function as artists.
The architect, Victoria Watson, has undertaken research that aims to
"examine and evaluate (Henri) Lefebvre's accusation that (Mies van der
Rohe's) architecture was the manifestation of 'the worldwide,
homogenous and monotonous architecture of the state'." Her research
proceeded through making a lattice structure of cotton thread that
reproduced only the grid of Miesian architecture and revealed complex
spatial effects leading to a new large scale proposal, the 'Cotton Caves'
designed for Stevenage Town centre with "vibrant optical properties" that
bring warmth to the "cold body of the town. The work contributes to the
debate about Modern Architecture and Mies van der Rohe but it also
creates new spatial phenomena that go beyond the original intention of
the work.
Paul Reader, of University of New England in Australia, has provided a
description of the project "It was like a movie" in which he explores effects
of juxtaposing video images following reflections on how the writer Gary
Krug formed a particular observation (on 9/11). Reader's account is a
highly personal one which avoids making a direct response to the
questions asked in the case study template. In this he is consistent with
his contributions to the online debate where his position was to challenge
the preconceptions bound up in the conventional models of inquiry. He
asserts very strongly "that a practice based research act can precede
formulation of a research question. It also begs the question as to what
constitutes a methodology?" His position is self-consciously and
assertively outside the mainstream but it prefigures the issues debated
below in 4.4
Kristina Niedderer, a German metalworker who undertook a PhD in the
UK, has explored the concept of "performative objects" that stimulate
particular behaviours and "mindfulness" in their users. The research, "A
Study in Designing Mindful Interaction Through Artefacts," set out to
analyse and define the concept of the performative object through
conceptualisation, making and comparative evaluation of objects intended
to have performative properties. She describes her research as a "naming
and classification" study but it has the unusual aspect that, while it is
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
possible to identify performative objects that exist already, she has set out
to create the matter that she is classifying.
Lionel Dean's Doctoral project "Future Factories" develops the notion of
'mass individualisation' (more usually called mass customisation) in which
modern techniques allow the production of one-off industrial products.
This notion has a number of problems, not least the difficulty of producing
satisfying unique designs economically, whether produced by an
individual or a professional. Dean's proposition is to develop a
"generative" design that uses evolutionary algorithms to introduce a
random element which might nevertheless remain true to the designer's
intent. The value of the work is indicated by the acquisition of one of
Dean's pieces by the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as well as
a series of refereed publications.
Finally John Lindsay's project "Green and Smart" indicates that there is
interesting work that has yet to connect fully with the academic arena.
Lindsay and others have conducted a long-term examination of urban
mapping and notations that could engender a shift in behaviour in favour
of "greener" travel. This work has been exhibited and demonstrated to a
wide variety of audiences but it has yet to have impact in either the
professional or academic arenas. It examines the relationship between
information design and the institutions of engineering, planning, politics
and arguably it fits well with the current interest in interdisciplinary
research and practice. While Lindsay's propositions may be difficult to
"sell" in the short-term environment of professional practice they could find
more fertile soil in an academic setting as long as the protagonists are
able to frame their work in terms that will be recognised by the wider
community of academics. While we might sympathise with Paul Reader's
rejection of conventional structures it is arguable that practice-led
research needs to map itself against those structures if it is to have a full
role in the academy.
Significance of Doctoral Projects
A high proportion (50%) of the 38 projects are from PhD projects. From
our observation of debates and our consultations we can speculate that
this may have several causes:
Firstly we have observed directly and through the responses of the
questionnaire surveys, that those who have completed or are well
advanced in PhD studies are among the most confident and articulate
members of the ADA research community, with a clear understanding of
the need to disseminate your work in an academic setting, compared to
"undoctored" mid-career academics and those approaching doctoral study.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
It is reasonable to assume that they will be more ready to take any
opportunity to demonstrate their work.
Similarly we may speculate that this group are the beneficiaries of the
growth of understanding of practice-led research, referred to by Owain
Pedgley below where he explains how the lack of confidence felt by him
and his supervisors in a very early practice-led project has been
dissipated by the more recent growth of exemplars and shared practices,
promoted, for example, by the inter-university research training schemes
funded by AHRC.
Finally, we can also speculate that the large number of "research active"
academics entered in the 2001 RAE includes many whose work might be
presented as directed inquiry but whose ability to conduct independent
inquiry and expose it with confidence to their peers might be in question.
This was supported by our follow-up to the institutional survey (Footnote
42 above) which indicated that less than half of "research-active" staff
were able to work independently within formal research frameworks such
as peer-reviewed funding.
International Implications
The case examples are predominately (82%) from the UK. However the
audience from which they were requested is the same international
audience that engaged with questionnaires, online workshop and the
project mail list where the ratio of UK participation was around half (eg
56% of survey responses). While we cannot put too much significance on
this absence of non-UK evidence, and the project was of more relevance
to UK people, nevertheless it does indicate that the UK has a large share
of the visible activity in this field and the large number of "observers" from
other countries indicates interest in what we are doing. The examples also
appeared to include 5 PhD projects by international students in the UK,
the same number as contributions from other countries.
In the absence of international case examples it is difficult to be certain
about the spread of activity. However our impression through the various
aspects of this work, supported by anecdotes encountered in past
debates, indicates that the main focus of practice-led research is to be
found in Northern Europe (particularly the UK and Scandinavia) and
Australia.
One factor noted in expert papers concerned with doctoral education in
design is the effect of different validation regimes. At the La Clusaz
Doctoral Education in Design Conference, contrasting papers from the UK
and USA pointed to the rigidity of the US regional system of validating
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Project is an investigation
of the discipline....
....an investigation of
something outside the
discipline
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
PhD Programs which inhibited innovation^^ and the more fluid UK system
of institution-wide validation which allowed new developments in both
research focus and research methods^^. A further example from
University of Barcelona^"^ indicates a system which favours predetermined
departmental programmes of research.
Birth pains of practice-led research
Dr Owain Pedgley provided a significant example. He undertook doctoral
research at Loughborough University in the mid 1990's, the first practice-
led design research project undertaken at Loughborough, supervised by
engineering academics who had to develop their approach from scratch.
From earlier published work^^ it appears that the project group were led
into an over-convoluted approach. This was prompted by a
methodological prescription published by theorists who may not
themselves have engaged in practice led research, or who were imagining
a quite different scenario to the one emerging at Loughborough. The
project was making a straightforward contribution to knowledge of aspects
of technology and musical instrument design supported by thoughtful
qualitative methods but the PhD was framed as a piece of reflective
practice that played down the true contribution. Pedgley comments:
With the benefit of hindsight, and the research discussions that have been held
in the period since submitting the PhD, I would now be confident to supervise
practice-led design research directed solely at product innovation (e.g. pushing
technology for non-wood musical instruments forward). In 1995, neither I nor
my supervisory team were brave enough, informed enough or armed with
sufficient examples to take that route. Things have moved on very positively
since then
Perceptions and focus of projects
Looking beyond our own qualitative observations on the examples, the
analysis of the scalar questions revealed some issues:
A majority of projects was described as investigations of the
researcher's own discipline but 5 were clearly investigations of
something outside the discipline, with 3 positioned at the point of
balance between the two propositions.
Project arises in a Examples from fine art were described as arising in a
professional/creative
context.... professional/creative context whereas those from design and
....arises in an academic architecture were positioned at the point of balance, except one
context example (Pedgley) which was located in the academic half
52
55
Kroelinger and Giard, 2000
Scrivener 2000
Rust 2003
Norman, Heath & Pedgley (2000)
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Practice is central to the
research....
....practice supports the
research
Practice is a site for
reflection....
....practice is a means of
production
The investigation is
secure....
....investigation is risky
The investigation is
generative....
....investigation is
analytical
uses a single set of
theory/ methods....
.... uses a wide range of
theory/ methods
. Responds to questions
.. Identifies questions
Product of the research is
artefact....
.... Product is
understanding of process
Outcomes are explicit....
.... Outcomes open to
interpretation
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
The majority of projects described practice as being central to the
research activity. 7 design projects described practice as playing a
supporting role in the research
Projects are fairly evenly spread between reflection and production, but
with a cluster balanced in the middle, reflection was mainly Fine Art,
Production was mainly Design.
3 distinct clusters: two at the extremes of risky or secure with a third
group in the middle. Design projects were found in all three areas. No
fine art investigation was described as being predominantly risky. The
"risky" examples were all investigations of the discipline.
Only 3 investigations are described as being predominantly analytical.
8 are clustered in the centre suggesting both generative and analytical
elements. The remainder are clustered towards the generative end of
the spectrum. No differences between disciplines
Most projects used a wide range of theory/methods, 3 were at the point
of balance and one used a single set of methods
Projects are evenly spread but there are no projects situated at either
extreme. 5 are located at the centre. Fine art tended to be more
focussed on identifying questions rather than responding.
A cluster of 8 projects is located at the balance point. The remaining
are divided between artefact and process. 3 are described as being
entirely artefact, no projects are located at the opposite extreme
indicating a reluctance to claiming a purely process output even though
some of the examples seemed to be claiming that in their descriptions
Design outcomes mainly in the explicit end and Fine art mainly open to
interpretation
Most contributors were able to be explicit about the contribution of their
research but one example summed up the problem of contribution in art
research. The section on contribution to knowledge / understanding /
practice started with the word "hopefully" and went on to discuss the
possible impact of the work. The research was purposeful and methodical
but so far it has stopped short of knowing its contribution. Some other
examples had similar problems and dealt with it by describing the
audience for the artwork. Elsewhere we have discussed this problem as a
potential research question. (4.4)
AHRC Cases
Statistical data from the AHRC cases, on disciplines represented,
amounts of funding etc, can be found in earlier sections of this data
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
chapter. We also examined the AHRC Cases against the same criteria as
the invited examples above, the main difference being that we could apply
the questions consistently rather than depending on how individual
contributors interpreted them. The weakness is that the analysis relied on
the descriptions supplied in the research proposal:
• In a large majority of examples (71%) the creative or professional
practice was the central or only instrument of the research. In the
remainder it formed part of a mix of activities. This agrees closely with
the submitted examples. This observation is consistent over all
disciplines.
• There was an even balance between investigations of the discipline
(eg Alison Clarke's investigation of the nature of video portraits in
relation to historic portrait techniques) and investigations of something
outside the discipline, (eg Snol Snelvelt's work on how neuroscientists
might provide better representations of their knowledge).
• The majority of inquiries (59%) appeared to arise in a
professional/creative context. 27% came from an academic context
and the remaining 14% were balanced between the two.
• We looked at whether the research was advancing an existing
paradigm or challenging orthodoxy. It was not surprising that the great
majority (70%) appeared to working with an existing paradigm in terms
of the contribution to knowledge and a very small number (4 examples)
appeared to be challenging orthodoxy (eg work by Mohini Chandra
that explores alternative ways to tell histories of colonialism and
Graham Whiteley's investigation of entirely new concepts for the
construction of artificial limbs). The remainder (23%) were in the
middle of the range, indicating some challenge to existing thinking.
In contrast, the majority of people who submitted case examples to us
asserted that they were challenging orthodoxy, possibly an indication
of how artists and designers perceive themselves and their creative
practice rather than a true reflection of their research aim.
• We also asked whether the research was responding to questions or
identifying them, since it has been claimed that art practice is better at
doing the latter. Approximately half of the projects were firmly in the
mode of responding to specific questions but nearly as many had at
least some evidence of raising questions as well as answering them,
(eg projects that develop novel techniques for creative practice or
forms of communication that question perceptions in other disciplines)
• In half of all cases the main practical outcome of projects was an
artefact. A smaller number (31%) resulted in understanding of process
with 17% balanced in between. While there is no fundamental reason
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
why an artefact should not embody a contribution to knowledge if
properly contextualised by a supporting text this is a contentious area.
In 4.4. we have suggested that positioning the exhibition or other
practice output at the end of the project can be problematic for both
methods and dissemination.
In looking at the examples from different research funding schemes, while
the AHRC files do not tell the whole story, it appears that the main
research grant scheme has engendered an increasingly high quality of
proposal, with some weaknesses in the very early years disappearing
over time. The Research Leave, Small Grants and Fellowship presented a
less confident picture and we note that AHRC has made some a number
of changes to these schemes.
NESTA Cases
We reviewed 30 projects funded by NESTA (National Endowment for
Science Technology and the Arts) to see how projects by professional
practitioners, selected by NESTA for their innovative quality, compared
with the academic examples.
The projects ranged in length from 9 months to 5 years, the average
award was £77,550 (ranging from £3,000 to £225,000) and the award
holders included artists, designers and architects.
The projects were all valid examples of innovation and all could have
been carried out within an academic research setting. The main
differences observed were that the work was not set in any explicit
theoretical or critical framework, or wider context of innovation or
knowledge development and the descriptions of projects provided by
NESTA followed the practice (found widely in art and design practice) of
extravagant claims for the achievements of practitioners. The material
provided by NESTA was written about the practitioner rather than by them
so it was impossible to tell how far the award holders owned the ambitious
narrative provided to describe their work.
However all those criticisms could be made of the position of some ADA
academics, evidenced for example in criticisms of some RAE
submissions^^ and all the NESTA projects had potential to contribute to
knowledge, for example Giles Revell's use of photography to reveal the
structure of insects in a project funded by the NESTA Art/Science
scheme^^. Several projects made claims to have influenced the thinking of
scientists as well as producing new creative works.
'' Brown, Gough & Roddis (2003) have discussed the problem of straightforward practice
proposed as research in RAE submissions.
^^ http://www.nesta.org.uk/ourawardees/profiles/1414/index.html
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
There is a difference between NESTA and AHRC-funded work which can
be seen in the scholarly disciplines enforced by research degree
frameworks and the peer review system, and the research culture
developing in some ADA departments. Without those there would be little
difference to observe between the work carried out under the NESTA
umbrella and work by ADA academics and it is important for academics to
recognise this.
3.2.4 Online Workshop
Three weeks of moderated e-mailings have cultivated a set of voices as familiar
as presenters on Talk Radio. I tuned in whenever I could and when I could not
keep up with the daily instalments I printed out chunks of correspondence to
read at leisure. Thank goodness for the J ISC archive of these exchanges.
Althea Greenan
The online workshop took place in June 2006 and was intended to explore
specific questions that had emerged in the earlier consultation. Fuller
details of this event can be found in Appendix B. 59 people from 12
countries took an active part in the debate including 38 from the UK. A
further 200 people joined the online audience for the event.
The workshop had three one week sessions each with a discussion topic:
1 . Relevance to Professions and Society.
2. Development and Impact of the PhD
3. Themes and Characteristics of Practice-Led Research
There was also a continuing theme throughout the workshop:
Being an Academic
Each weekly session was launched by invited "speakers" who provided a
short position paper to stimulate discussion and raise questions. The
discussion was moderated to ensure that contributions from participants
were of manageable length and kept on topic.
While the debate was very lively and covered a wide range of issues, it
was more useful in airing issues than resolving them. However the event
concluded with a request to participants to submit summaries of the
issues that interested them and this resulted in contributions from 23
people who took a more measured and constructive position on the
discussion. Some significant points that arose were:
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Necessity of engaging witii practice outside tiie academy
Johannes Birringer^^ argued that the academy does not generally provide
the environment or stimulus for advanced creative work.
/ have not always found such sustainable and exciting/challenging research
conditions in the academic universe (challenging in the sense in which artistic
experimentation and innovation necessarily involve and require a heavy-duty
peer to peer context of artists exchanging knowledge and ideas and impelling
each other to do new and better work, rehearse with each other, test each
other's assumption and subject them to critique and then to the critical eyes of
the public, audiences, markets), and thus I often prefer to create them outside
Phillip Hughes commented in a similar vein that star practitioners in
architecture were pre-eminent role models because they had the
resources to conduct live projects with very tangible, visible results.
Academics did not have the same opportunities to demonstrate their
thinking.
"Posttlieorisation "
Birringer's use of this term was challenging but a useful reminder that it
may be necessary for the creative disciplines to assert the need for an
open-ended, uncertain process when developing new work. Katy
Macleod^^ made a similar point
The logic comes after the event. After the rendezvous, as Duchamp would have
it, the co-efficient of the gesture (object?) and its interpretation
In the Fine Art workshop, taking up this point, we considered the problem
that an exhibition was often regarded as the appropriate end point for
research and agreed that an approach that allowed for reflection and
other directed forms of evaluation to follow on from the creative work,
rather than relying principally on reflection in action, might help to unlock
the problem of contribution (4.4. The Nature of Contribution)
Journeymanshiip & tiie Craft Guiid l\/lodei
Ken Friedman^° raised the issue of the journeyman nature of the PhD
which was taken up by a number of contributors who emphasised the
need for a supportive community, perhaps reflecting the newness of
doctoral training in many ADA institutions. (Respondents to the Research
Experience Questionnaire indicated that that less than half of those who
held a doctorate had been part of a supportive group of peers during their
doctoral research). Friedman also pursued a similar "craft" theme
elsewhere in the workshop, in using the metaphor of the closed Craft
Guild to contrast with the commitment to shared development of
'' Chair in Drama & Performance Technologies, Brunei Univ, UK
^^ Exeter School of Arts and Design, UK
^° Norwegian School of Management and Denmark's Design School
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
knowledge expected of the academic community. This was a valuable tool
for identifying when practice was not contributing to research.
Basic Requirements for researcli
Friedman also asserted the importance of a common set of requirements
for the conduct of research that go beyond any one discipline (as
represented by the AHRC definition of research):
Practice-led research must necessarily meet the conditions for any form of
research.
However as described above, this position was challenged by Katy
Macleod who questioned assumptions about contributions (4.4.). Arguably
the classic descriptions of research still hold true but some of the
assumptions which are used to interpret them may not be helpful to some
researchers in ADA.
Professionai Doctorates and Practice-ied PhiDs
Ranulph Glanville^^ described the Architecture PhD by invitation
programme at RMIT University - a practice-led programme in which
practicing architects engage with questions of practice. This programme is
widely admired for its rigour but it also questions the concept of
contribution since the focus of the research is directed towards the work of
the participants, despite the focus on putting the research in its wider
context. It may be that this programme fulfils the requirements of a
professional doctorate in the UK sense of "research in the service of
practice". However the debate about this issue is confused by
assumptions in many countries that professional doctorates are, or should
be, awarded for advanced practice.
IVIotivation for practice-ied research!
Althea Greenan^^, who is an artist and archivist (of an art collection),
stated that she would not have undertaken doctoral research without the
opportunity to conduct practice-led research. On the one hand she had no
interest in undertaking scholarly research within the tradition of her work
as an archivist and on the other hand, as an artist, she realised that:
...if I do not engage with practice-led research I will no longer have a practice,
just a job.
Zoe Sadokierski^^ made a similar point.
An interest in contributing to a growing field of knowledge and a belief that
reflective practice allows me to develop as a design professional, were enough
^^ RIVIIT University, IVIelbourne, Australia
^^ Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
^^ University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
incentive for me to begin.... the potential to enter academic life full time interests
me, but I would never give up practice entirely to do so.
As did Owain Pedgley^"^ who gained one of the first practice-led design
PhD's in the UK and has made a substantial and highly respected
contribution to the debate
You don't need to design in order to deliver high-quality research, for example,
into other people's designing, into the efficacy and desirability of products, or
into the effectiveness of newly devised design guidelines. But where's the
continuity, sense, satisfaction, or empowerment in that for a design graduate?
This theme was also reflected by a contributor from outside the ADA
disciplines
As someone who has always had trouble fitting into the strongly theoretical
environment of English studies, I applaud a focus on practical project-based
work (Sue Thomas^^).
These individuals seem to speaking for a great many ADA academics
who define themselves through their membership of a creative community
and their wish to sustain their creative role. As academics they will not
abandon that membership and arguably their work in the academy would
lose its point if they did.
Barriers (of language?) between academics and practitioners
Several contributors from design spoke regretfully of the difficulty of
communication between academics and practitioners, illustrating, and
perhaps explained by, the lack of engagement between the two.
many practitioners' voices remain unheard as they become increasingly
intimidated (or irritated) by the 'lingo (IVIartin Salisbury^^)
Each time I participate in debates on practice-led research and related themes,
I notice an inexorably present language-divide between practitioners and
academics. (Daria Loi ^)
research becomes a discourse hermetically closed to the ones who
speak/understand that "language game". We need to "jump" across other
"language games" in order to articulate our discourse to other groups, namely
the professionals (Luis Inacio^^)
Sadly this concern has a mirror image in the feelings of more experienced
researchers towards practitioner colleagues, who are perceived as lacking
a critical position, and we have heard personal accounts of this difficulty,
from designers who have achieved a doctorate and are working in
practice.
^"^ Loughborough University, UK
^^ Professor of New Media, De IVIontfort University, UK
^^ Anglia Ruskin University, UK
^^ RIVIIT University, IVIelbourne, Australia
^^ Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal)
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Conclusions
The workshop has given us a taste of the international academic
comnnunity engaged with practice led research in ADA and beyond. There
has been a tendency to focus on doctoral research, probably realistic
given the newness of the field and relative novelty of the PhD in ADA.
The debate was more mature than that observed in 2000 when there was
an upsurge of interest in practice-led research at the time of the La Clusaz
Doctoral Education in Design Conference. While there is still a high
proportion of inexperienced participants and some naive thinking^^ the
arguments were better rehearsed and participants much more willing and
able to reflect on the debate. There was also evidence of a growing
number of people with recent doctorates who had strong relevant insights
and readiness to lead the debate. They demonstrate that there is a
growing supply of role models for the novices.
Johannes Birringer's concept of "posttheorisation" did not make any
waves in the debate at the time but it turned out to have much more
relevance as the review progressed, chiming with the thinking developed
in the fine art workshop in September. The workshop also pointed to the
gap between professionals and academics also mentioned in various
other contexts.
The clearest insight from the workshop came from the reasons given for
taking up practice-led research. The argument that professionals and
teachers in ADA need an approach to research that does not undermine
their identity as creative practitioners is hard to refute.
3.2.5
Individual Responses
UK 141
Non-UK 107
Institutional Responses
Fine Art 9
Design & Applied Arts 6
Architecture 4
Questionnaire Surveys
We conducted two questionnaire surveys. The first, aimed at all
researchers, explored their experiences as individuals (Research
Experience Survey - Appendix C). The second, for research leaders,
investigated institutional issues and patterns of activity and experience
(Institutional Research Survey - Appendix D).
The Research Experience Survey received 248 responses from
researchers around the world including 141 in the UK. An analysis of
respondents will be found in Appendix C
The Institutional Research Survey received 19 responses from Heads
of Dept or Heads of Research and we believe that it provides useful
guidance to broad patterns but is not a reliable source of statistics^°.
Artists and Designers are not naturally deferential so the idea that experienced heads
may know something important about all this can be hard to accept
^° This was a relatively small number of respondents. The survey, which drew on the
earlier consultation work, was conducted during the summer period and there was little
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Where we have indicated numbers or percentages these can only be
taken as very broad indications. Respondents were asked to complete
the questionnaire for one disciplinary group only.
All Academics in Sample
^ Staff
Active
Practice-led
Hold PhD
Registered for PhD
Supervising PhD
Academics with PhDs
25% of research-active UK
ADA academics hold PhD
degrees?
Academic Activity and Experience
The institutional responses provide a picture of staff activity and
experience. The average number of academic staff in a department was
32 of whom 24 were described as research active (we took this to be in
RAE terms). 18 were engaged in practice-led research, 6 had a PhD, 3
were working towards a PhD and 9 were supervising PhD's
These figures indicate a much higher proportion of research-active staff
than the RAE data so the institutions responding may represent the more
research-focused end of the spectrum with higher rates of participation.
The individual researchers' survey, with a larger sample of institutions,
indicates that 57% of academics are research-active which is more
consistent with the RAE2001 data.
This pattern was generally consistent across all three of the groups
although Design/Applied Arts depts had larger overall numbers (42) than
Architecture (28) or Fine Art (29), which matches our national picture of
student and staff numbers and appears to be consistent with the larger
number of subjects within Design.
This survey indicated that 25% of research-active staff (19% of all
academics) had PhDs. Given the mismatch with the RAE data we suspect
this may exaggerate the number of doctorates. Respondents to our
individual researchers' survey indicated that 40% of 82 research active UK
academics had PhDs but these were self selected for a strong interest in
the development of research. Numbers of PhDs held by academics have
risen. The institutional survey indicated that they have risen by a third from
5 years ago (from 4 to 6 per department on average).
The responses from individual researchers also indicated that the
international ratio was different. 52% of 61 non-UK academics responding
held a PhD. Again these were self-selected for interest in the development
of research.
Funding sources for
research
Generai nature of researcti projects and funding
Looking at the volume of work, rather than the numbers of people involved,
institutions estimated that half of their research was practice-led although
time remaining to encourage further respondents. However the responses were
consistent on a number of important points and included some very clear observations
on important issues. Given the expertise and experience of the respondents we felt that
it was a useful sample to identify issues if not statistically reliable.
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Funding sources for
individual researcli UK
Funding for group
research UK
Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
the proportion varied greatly between them. There was a strong bias
towards individual inquiry (80%) rather than team projects and a spread of
funding sources between external sources (35%), institutional funding
(40%) and research not funded directly as such (24%).
The large proportion of work with no explicit funding source may reflect the
way that some practitioner/academics are able to exploit professional work
funded by other means for their research, there is also a possible
imbalance between Pre-1992 and Post-1992 institutions as the latter have
fewer research-active staff and may be applying QR money more directly
to individuals and projects. 7/15 indicated this was the case while none of
the 4 pre1992 institutions who responded had direct control over QR
income but may have teaching workloads more geared to research.
The individual researchers' survey gives a more detailed picture of funding
sources. It describes numbers of projects rather than amount of money so
we have not given detailed figures. Not surprisingly research councils and
other research funding sources figure more strongly in support for group
research and they probably fund more of the large-scale projects so this
data is likely to underplay their contribution. However it gives a sense of
the funding opportunities available.
The responses from non-UK researchers indicate that they depend more
on research funding organisations and businesses and less on institutions
or charities.
Most departments who had received QR funding have applied it to support
for individual staff projects as well as a smaller amount allocated to
resources that support research. These institutions have also applied SRIF
funds in ADA and the majority have invested the money in equipment
while a small number have also spent it on new or refurbished buildings.
We asked institutions a number of questions about whether Full Economic
Costing had improved the support for practice-led research. It is our
impression that FEC is helpful to practice-led research since it allows
grants to be used to pay for the investigator's time, an essential step when
the investigator wishes to employ their own creative practice rather than
working by proxy through a researcher. However the responses we
received were generally very negative with most people indicating
dissatisfaction with FEC and not believing that it was particularly relevant
to practice-led research. As FEC is very new the position may change if
institutions start to see benefits of the system in action.
Aims of practice-led
research
Motivation
Respondents to the individual researchers' survey were asked for their
main aim in undertaking practice-led research. The two main responses, in
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
similar numbers were "to add to our understanding of practice" (37%) and
"to add to our understanding of questions arising outside the immediate
concerns of practice (34%). These both seem valid and mature answers
and indicate an appropriate balance of interest. Another group (18%)
selected "to support my creative practice" and this seems to indicate a
minority of this group who may not have understood the principle of a
general contribution to knowledge. A final group selected "none of the
above" but from their descriptions, either they preferred to assert a mix of
the reasons given, eg:
to support my creative practice AND to add to our understanding of practice
AND to effectively teacii architecture in a meaningful manner.
or they gave reasons which were mostly easy to translate into one or other
of the three choices, eg:
To understand a subject outside art by using the practice as the mode of inquiry
One or two gave rather generalised responses which concealed more than
they revealed:
to access knowledge which emerges through engagement with artistic practice
when this is undertaken within a critical/academic framework
Other questions asked about researcher's personal aspirations. 60%
preferred to remain in academic work (41% strongly) but 30% were
interested in moving to professional practice, 12% strongly.
Introduction to academic
researcii
Routes into research careers
The greatest number of researchers (41%) first became involved in
academic research through Master's degree studies. 25% were introduced
by Doctoral studies, 17% entered through being employed as teaching in
Higher Education and 8% through being employed as a researcher. The
"other" category mostly mapped on to the above groups or gave enigmatic
explanations.
Interdisciplinary
collaborations
Institutional response
(by volume of work)
Interdisciplinary research
The surveys both indicated a strong strand of interdisciplinary research
which appears to be a very positive feature of practice-led research in
ADA. There was evidence of collaborations within the creative disciplines
but also beyond in all areas of research. 8/19 institutional respondents
said their practice based research tended to be interdisciplinary and 12/19
stated that they were explicitly organised to support interdisciplinary
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Interdisciplinary
collaborations
Individual researchers'
response (by numbers of
collaborations)
research.
A majority (12/19) agreed, 6 of them strongly, that practice-led research is
highly valued by collaborators and half agreed that it was easier to get
funding for interdisciplinary research than discipline-specific work.
The survey of individual researchers also indicated a strong involvement in
interdisciplinary research with 78% indicating that the different disciplines
working together had developed a shared approach to their research. This
reflects the agreement by 13/19 institutional respondents that collaborators
from other disciplines influence their practice-led research methods.
90 respondents provided a list of disciplines with which they had
collaborated and a very wide spectrum of academia was represented,
Most people listed at least three disciplines and many gave a much longer
list.
Here is a small sample:
Medical Physics l-listory Gerontology Computer Science Engineering linguistics,
semiology, ecology, human history Design Engineering Civil Engineering
Manufacturing Engineering Psychology Sociology Management Furniture
Design Interior Design Mechanical, electrical, computer engineering. Dye &
Colour Chemistry Physics Polymer technology Laser Engineering Garment
design Industrial Design Interaction Design Informatik Geologie Usability
Oekonomie Marketing Soziokulturelle Animation Pravention Soziologie
Interkulturelle Kommunikation Archaeology Sociology Anthropology Tourism
and Management glass and stone finishing Literature, religion, art history.
Planning Landscape architecture Ethnography Architecture Design Studies
Participatory and User-Centred Design; Social Science; Education; HCI; Art;
Industrial & Communication Design; Management; History, applied linguistics,
applied psychology.
Impact of research on ADA institutions
There was a very strong agreement from institutions with the statement
that research-active academics make a distinctive contribution to
curriculum and teaching. Comments included:
The output of undergraduate and Masters-level work has now found bigger
platforms because of staff practice-led research. The closer understanding of
research mechanisms and discipline infrastructures helps to open up
possibilities. (Design/Applied Arts)
Our practice-led research active members of staff use their research to give
lectures, workshops and seminars and our galleries are also highly active with
an innovative programme of contemporary art work generated by staff through
their research. There are many more examples which touch upon the various
aspects of subject development such as international links, teaching materials
and case studies, but overall research tends to breed confidence and credibility
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
within ttie subject tiirougli staff, wliicli is clearly much more difficult to measure.
(Design/Applied Arts)
It has allowed new forms of practice and new methods of design to be taken
seriously (Architecture)
The output of undergraduate and Masters-level work has now found bigger
platforms because of staff practice-led research. (Architecture)
Highest impact has been on curriculum design and delivery, including increased
access to new technologies (Fine Art)
Individual researchers also indicated that their research was having an
effect on teaching. 80% asserted this although only 53% were confident
that they could provide evidence.
There was also agreement, although less strongly stated, that academics
today have a clearer understanding of research than 5 years ago. In
general our impression from various sources of data has been that the
period since 2001 has seen a good deal of consolidation and growth of
confidence about practice-led research. Most respondents agreed,
although not emphatically, that newer academics were more focused on
research, the exceptions were departments in pre-1992 universities.
The individual researchers' survey indicated a general satisfaction with
the effect that research was having on individual careers in HE.
Respondents agreed strongly that their research had made them part of a
wider academic community beyond their institution and also that it had
helped them to develop connections with practitioners and businesses or
other organisations beyond Higher Education.
Impact of research beyond the institution
We asked individual researchers a number of questions about impact and
asked them to say whether they had evidence to support their assertions.
The main results were:
Yes 1 have evidence
of this
1 believe that it has
but 1 have no
evidence
influenced other researchers
beyond nny institution
50%
26%
influenced practitioners
35%
29%
influenced the lives of people
outside nny acadennic or
professional connnnunity
32%
26%
contributed to research nnethods
in nny field
31%
37%
The categories of evidence indicated were:
Form of evidence % of respondents claiming this evidence
Requests to speak about your research f
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
64
Infornnal feedback fronn other researchers or practitioners L J 84
Requests to advise on other people's research | J 77
Citations |
Requests to carry out further, related research | 1 55
Artworks/designs influenced by your research | J 30
Social/professional practices influenced by your research | J 28
Policy decisions by businesses, public bodies or other
organisations
1
21
Sonne of the "other" fornns of evidence were evidence of peer review of the
research rather than innpact.
Doctoral Training
We asked a nunnber of questions about PhD provision and the experience
of those who hold PhDs.
Respondents to the institutional survey indicate that:
• More departnnents have a large group of doctoral students than 5
years ago. The average for these institutions is 17 students (8 in 2001)
of which 9 are undertaking practice-led research (2 in 2001)
• Most departnnents (16/19) provide fornnal research training designed
specifically for their subject (9 in 2001), nearly all of these (15) now
include training in nnethods for practice-led research (only 2 in 2001).
• Training progrannnnes provided by subject areas outside ADA have not
increased (6/19 departnnents) but there has been a big increase in
institution-wide research training (15/19 depts now, only 3 in 2001)
• Fornns of thesis include equal nunnbers of conventional theses (43%)
and theses supported by exhibitions (43%) with a snnaller nunnber
(14%) in which the exhibition or other practice output is regarded as
the nnain output, supported by other docunnentation.
• Not all students are interested in an acadennic career particularly in
Fine Art, where nnore than half have other reasons for undertaking a
PhD including innproving their practice.
• A nnajority (12/19) of respondents say that their departnnent has linnited
capacity to supervise PhD students in ADA. This was nnarked in Fine
Art where 8/9 respondents said this.
• A large nnajority (15/19) agreed that good graduates in their subject
tend to focus on opportunities in professional practice rather than
research. A snnall nnajority (1 1/19) agreed that graduates in their
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
subject are not aware of the opportunities in acadennic research. This
was particularly marked in design (5/6 respondents)
• Only a small majority (1 1/19) believed that Doctoral students are the
main source of academics in future and a similar number (10/19)
believed that PhD studies are having a beneficial effect on
professional practice. However respondents had a more positive view
of the long term - a larger majority (14/19) believed that the PhD will
have a beneficial effect on professional practice in future and nearly all
(17/19) believed that the growth of doctoral studies have changed the
academic culture in a positive way. Comments included:
Doctoral students in the department change the centre of gravity and focus
attention on higher level issues
Professionals in a variety of design jobs normally do not hold a doctoral
qualification. When they do they appear to be in significant and influential
positions with knowledge at the forefront of their work
Architecture (which for too long has relied on the myth of genius) needs to
establish its knowledge base and to communicate its ability to
creatively/rigorously synthesise information through the act of design. The
PhD and other practice-led research is a method of doing this
Responses from individual researchers indicate:
• There was a high degree of satisfaction (among an admittedly self-
selected sample) that PhD studies had led to benefits in their
subsequent careers, including new work opportunities, and benefits to
their work as both practitioners and teachers. This group also rejected
the suggestion that their research degree had made them less
effective as creative practitioners, although there was a minority of
18% who agreed with that statement.
• Two thirds had gone on to postdoctoral research on the same topic as
their PhD, or one that is closely related.
• Only 50% of those holding PhDs said that they were completely happy
with their supervision. While several respondents pointed out that it
would be Utopian to expect complete satisfaction, and there was a
normal number of the generic problems one would find in any
discipline, there are some issues specific to ADA and practice-led
research. This example encapsulates many of the issues:
. . . there was not sufficient support for the practice-led element (which is
understandable, as my project was only the second practice-led phd in XXXX
in the UK) also, my second supervisor was an anthropologist and was not
prepared to accept that there was a valid point in researching XXXX as art
form, rather than as a social phenomenon. The second supervisor was not
interested in my research but accepted to be part of the supervisory team in
order to get experience in doctoral supervision.
Problems include supervisors who did not understand or have relevant
experience of practice-led research and supervisors imported from
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
Other disciplines to beef up an inexperienced team (50% of students
had supervisors from other disciplines - some to support
interdisciplinary projects but many to provide supervision experience).
The recent efforts of AHRC and QAA have transformed the support for
Doctoral students and there is a greater understanding of practice-led
research than could be found even 5 years ago but we have not seen
similar systematic attention to the development and training needs of
PhD supervisors in ADA.
• Responses also indicate that only 41% of the sample had been part of
a supportive group of postgraduate students during their doctorate.
One commented that their peer group had been mainly in two
institutions in a different city. This can be seen in the institutional
survey data above which indicates that 5 years ago institutions
typically had 2 students with practice-led projects in a cohort of 8
(today there are 9 in a cohort of 17). The online conference
demonstrated, in the discussion about journeymanship, people's need
for a supportive community. From this and other contributions and
comments we feel that most students today are likely to have a peer
group in their own department but we may not yet have achieved the
"critical mass" needed to ensure that all PhD students have that
necessary element of peer support.
Conclusions
From the questionnaire surveys we gain a picture of a field in which there
is a good deal of activity and energy but the infrastructure is very
stretched. The proportion of experienced, confident academics is
relatively small, putting a burden on those able to supervise PhDs and
mentor their less experienced colleagues. There has been a growth of
PhD studies but the new generation of postdocs have yet to have an
impact on the profile of the academic community, despite their eagerness
to do so.
There has been some rapid change in the past 5 years and this and other
sources indicate that practice led research has gone from being a
tentative development to a well-established part of many departments'
portfolio of research. There is a strong indication that practice-led
research stimulates interdisciplinarity and has a part to play in many
disciplines, reflecting the diverse contexts that artists and designers
connect with.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
4. Issues
4.1 Why?
Practice-led research has been a vexatious issue for ADA and other
academic comnnunities since the changes of 1992. Our review has
exposed some of the reasons for this and some reasons why the journey
has been worthwhile.
If mainstream ADA academics are to control their own destiny they need
an approach to the creation of knowledge that is relevant to them. We
have seen many arguments, by experienced and clear-minded people as
well as less experienced colleagues, that practice-led research provides a
necessary balance between maintaining a strong hold on the core
strengths of these creative disciplines and developing a community of
inquiry. Some exceptional and pioneering individuals may have made that
journey by engagement with the research traditions of other disciplines
but that does not justify expecting every academic artist, designer or
architect to become also a historian, social scientist or technologist even
though we should learn from all those fields and others.
Many of the examples of research we have seen are genuinely novel, not
just in the originality of their contribution but in its nature. Work by Sarah
Wigglesworth on the relationship between buildings and pedagogy, or
Owain Pedgley on the qualities of musical instruments, takes an approach
that is only accessible to those who can shape artefacts that expose novel
possibilities. That is not all they must do for the research to be valid but it
is a defining characteristic of practice-led research - that creative practice
can disrupt the status quo and allow us to explore new scenarios as well
as the ones that exist.
We have found strong evidence of interdisciplinarity and that seems to be
a consequence, in part at least, of this disruptive quality. Our disciplines
are able to provide a new dimension to interdisciplinary research, for
example technologists may speculate that new materials may be useful
for musical instruments but they need the designer to explore how that
possibility will work in practice before they can begin to understand it.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
More importantly they may not be able to visualise the potential in their
work without the novel questions that can be provided by the creative
disciplines.
Institutions and teachers have told us that practice-led research is
stimulating to their work. Not only does it change the curriculum and
materials available but they report that it changes the thinking and level of
ambition in their courses.
The price of this innovation has been a slow struggle. The 1990's was a
time of individual pioneers, small numbers of isolated PhD students and
confused debate. The current decade has seen a greater confidence,
more shared experience, larger cohorts of PhD students (arguably we
have not yet achieved critical mass) and a growing body of exemplars.
AHRB/AHRC has been a dynamic force in this and it is hard to remember
that it did not exist only a few years ago.
The history of another field is instructive. Medical research in the modern
era began with the study of pathology in the 19th century^\ However that
effort offered few if any "cures"^^ and it was only in the 1940's that a
century of scientific effort began to be translated into practical progress for
doctoring. At that point a new discipline of clinical research arose to
provide the tools for innovation in medicine but it was a severe challenge
to the medical schools of the day and posed new ethical and intellectual
questions that took decades to answer. We are so used to today's culture
of clinical research that it is hard to remember that, in the lifetime of some
of us, that tradition was tentative and not understood by the great majority
of doctors or their teachers.
In that light any difficulties of the past 14 years might be seen as
reasonable growing pains for a new community. Of course we should not
stretch the patience of our colleagues in the more confident disciplines but
we should recognise also that a research culture cannot mature overnight
and new methods cannot be expected work reliably without a period of
experiment and reflection.
~'^ Unless one wishes to extend the modern period back to the renaissance anatomists
^^ Luckily the surgeons, mere craftsmen, were on hand to sustain the tempo of innovative
treatment while their more scientifically-minded colleagues laboured in the diagnosis
mines.
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4.2 Infrastructure
4.2.1 The effect of AHRC Funding Schemes
Through our review of AHRC awards in ADA and the detailed examination
of 52 funded projects we have observed some interesting features of the
funding landscape.
As noted in 3.1 .2 Fine Art has received a large share of the funding
awarded to practice-led research in ADA. In great part this reflects the
energetic uptake of research opportunities by artists, also demonstrated in
RAE2001 . However another factor is the existence of special funding
schemes (Fellowships, small grants and research leave) that support
practice-led research and make up the bulk of the Fine Art awards.
As we have noted before, the ADA academic community, while energetic
and committed to developing its research, is generally less experienced in
research thinking than is normal across the university sector and the small
grant and research leave schemes offer a good way to develop the
experience of academics in service. The nature of these schemes,
providing funding for academics' time in the period before Full Economic
Costing, rather than only for research assistants, has been very
appropriate for researchers who wish to employ their own abilities as
experienced creative practitioners within a project.
4.2.2 Doctoral Research
The current low ratio of doctoral students to academics in ADA, and the
small number of academics with doctorates, indicates that we should
consider ways to increase the "production rate" of UK PhDs in ADA.
While the problem of providing a relevant doctoral training has been
addressed with a good measure of success, the issue of supervision
expertise is more pressing today as indicated in both of the questionnaire
surveys. In the longer term the new generation of postdocs should be well
equipped to supervise their successors but there is a gap that must be
bridged and our evidence indicates that it cannot be done completely by
the small number of experienced supervisors within the disciplines or
supervisors from outside ADA.
4.2.3 Full Economic Costing and practice-led research
We were disappointed that research leaders when questioned had not
generally noticed the significance of FEC for practice-led research. Now
that FEC is in place it is much more straightforward to use the mainstream
research grants scheme for projects that make a heavy call on academics'
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
own time and we feel that this opportunity may need to be clarified.
Arguably this is a problem for academics rather than the funding councils.
The effects of FEC have yet to be seen working out in practice. Ironically it
may turn out that FEC, with its current regime of paying 80% of costs,
undermines the small grant scheme for practice-led research in situations
where a high proportion of technical costs are incurred with a relatively
modest amount of academic staff time paid for. Again this may be a
question for academics and institutions to understand and think through.
4.2.4 Outcomes - Language and Meaning
In discussing research outcomes with the Fine Art workshop group it was
suggested that the language of bidding and reporting documents may
undermine the process of planning dissemination of practice-led research.
In most academic research the role of publications in disseminating
knowledge is central, well understood and includes an automatic check on
quality by peer reviewers. In ADA practice-led research the forms of
dissemination are very diverse, and that is acknowledged by AHRC in
providing a checklist of forms of output.
We are concerned that researchers should not assume that the
production of one of these forms of output is the principal aim. In fact most
of the output options do not guarantee that the audience or gate keeping
will be relevant and researchers must take responsibility for explaining
how knowledge from the research will be transmitted and why the
methods and audiences chosen are appropriate.
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4.3 Developing and Training Researchers
As indicated in 3.2.5. the efforts made by AHRC and others to improve
doctoral training have had good effect and we feel confident that ADA
doctoral students generally receive good training and support, including
support for practice-led methods. As indicated above we believe that
increasing the "production" of PhDs would be very beneficial and the
improvements in doctoral training make that a practical proposition.
4.3.1 Developing Academics
In contrast we feel that the majority of academics are still in need of help
to develop their understanding of research and ability to operate
independently as researchers. The proportion of inexperienced
researchers seen in our consultations is high, often half or more of the
people in a discussion.
On the positive side there is a great deal of energy and interest available
to be exploited and many academics, as indicated in our online workshop
report and the comments of Owain Pedgley above, see practice-led
research as the only way they can reconcile their dual identity as an
artist/designer/architect on the one hand, and an academic on the other.
The workshop also gave some evidence that individuals who may be
inexperienced and naive are, nevertheless, able to progress quickly in
their thinking when exposed to critical debate and examples of good
practice that reconcile some of their difficulties. The key issue for making
progress is structure - the moderated workshop appears to have achieved
a degree of agreement, or at least shared recognition or understanding of
issues, that is not evident in some longer-running but unstructured
debates in this arena.
4.3.2 Progression for Postdocs
While there is good support for the training of PhD students in ADA we
are less confident that sufficient opportunities exist for them to move into
the academic mainstream. During the review we heard some anecdotal
reports to the effect that post-doctoral applicants in art and design tend to
have difficulty in finding lecturer posts when in competition with
practitioners.
It is very hard to verify such claims since the proceedings of selection
panels are confidential but they are believable given that relatively few
members of a department are engaged with doctoral or postdoctoral
research (although many may be successful in RAE terms).
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We would therefore welcome any initiative that gave institutions or
departments an incentive to provide opportunities for postdocs to become
part of the permanent academic community.
4.3.3 Summary
To conclude, there has been gratifying progress in the levels of
competence in ADA research and clarity about the nature of practice-led
research, especially at doctoral level. This bodes well for the future.
However that surge of new competence is now working through the
system as new researchers' progress and we anticipate that new strains
will emerge.
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4.4 The Nature of Contribution
Through the consultation process and literature review we encountered a
persistent concern, expressed strongly in Fine Art but reflected across
ADA, that some practice-led inquiry resists the established descriptions of
research, exemplified by the AHRC's definition. This became one of the
central topics for the focus group held with experienced Fine Art
academics towards the end of the project and we were able to identify a
significant issue, the nature of outcome or contribution, which might be
addressed by some strategic research. (A fuller description of this
workshop can be found in Appendix E
In discussing established frameworks for research there was general
agreement that most experienced researchers would be able and willing
to position their work in terms of questions or problems, context, and
methods/methodology. However it was agreed that the idea of
outcome or contribution to knowledge/understanding was more
difficult to resolve and may require fresh thinking and this was a
challenge to the AHRC definition of research, or at least the way that
definition is generally interpreted.
At the core of this was the awkward problem that seeking to identify
explicit outcomes, in the way that other disciplines may take for granted,
can undermine the tacit process of engendering insight in the audience^^.
We acknowledged that it was not acceptable merely to assert that new
knowledge or insights have arisen "somewhere" as a result of the work
but it was clear that a delicate balance must be struck between the explicit
and tacit aspects of the research.
There appear to be two components to this. Firstly we must resolve the
philosophical problem of what kinds of contribution we expect from those
who undertake creative practice as the central vehicle for research (rather
than as an element of their methods). Secondly we must develop the
practical methods that can be used to give the ADA
practitioner/researcher proper ownership of the process. Workshop
participants believed that these questions had not been identified in this
way before, partly because debate has tended to include questions of
method and purpose which may be interesting and problematic but do not
challenge our established descriptions of research.
^^ During the online workshop debate described in 0, Katie IVIacLeod noted that "what has
fascinated philosophers about the Arts, is the development of their capacity to employ
the imagination to perceive things differently" She argued that a creative arts
academic can bring us to a closer understanding of complex propositions through the
imaginative possibilities opened up by material realisations.
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In the first arena, the nature of the contribution, it is arguable that all
knowledge is tacit in the sense that it exists in the understanding of
individuals rather than the documents or other media used to record it.
Most outcomes of advanced research require an effort by a reader to
internalise them and different readers may understand different things
from the record. This constructivist viewpoint offers a link between the
classical model of research contribution and one that emphasises tacit
insights in the audience rather than explicit assertions by the researcher.
It was agreed in the discussion that the creative arts are often better at
proposing questions than answering them and it has been argued by one
of the authors that the role of creative practitioners in a multi-disciplinary
setting is to frame the environment in which other specialists may
recognise propositions or opportunities to be developed in their research^"^.
We suggest that this is a fertile area for inquiry and, while there will be no
ready or single way to resolve it, some directed debate and research on
this particular issue would help the creative disciplines move forward.
The second aspect, that of methods, might also respond to some directed
inquiry. For example we discussed the degree to which artists might take
on some social science thinking, or some other methods, to allow them to
record or register some measures of influence on audience, whether that
involves the artist directly or might be achieved through appropriate
collaboration. This is not straightforward since we would not be seeking to
register transmission of specified knowledge but rather the effects on
attitudes, ideas or actions resulting from the artwork. It also raises the
perennial difficulty of maintaining a separation between the role of the
artist and the role of the observer.
The focus group discussion also drew attention to a widespread
expectation that an artwork will be the finishing point of a project and it
could be instructive to examine the idea of research that starts with
creative practice, not least because that breaks out of the classical
rational concept of preparation preceding action^^.
Finally, although this issue has been discussed in terms of Fine Art, we
are confident that the questions it raises are of interest to all ADA
disciplines^^.
^^ Rust 2004
^^ Gedenryd (1998) demonstrates how designers frequently confound the expectation of
most cognitive theory by choosing to immerse themselves immediately in visualisations
of the imagined future rather than undertaking analysis and planning before action. The
Design Methods movement in the 1960s attempted to develop a more scientific
approach to designing based on complex planning but most of the leading proponents
rejected such theories within a remarkably short time.
^^ For example research by Dunne and Raby adopts the principle of "critical design" to
deploy stimulating artefacts that influence audiences. This kind of work may be
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4.5 Quality
We have not set out to "measure" the quality of the research that we have
examined but we have been able to note areas where research is
generally successful in matching AHRC's aspirations for quality and
where it falls short.
Quality in the wider field of research is difficult to assess since the outputs
and gatekeepers are eclectic and there are many variations in practice
and purpose between the different areas of ADA. However our
assessment is that there are some sound research practices being used
in professional practice in design and architecture and these would benefit
from a better dialogue between academics and professionals. The RAE
has obscured the picture of research quality from an advanced research
perspective but anecdotal evidence from senior researchers in ADA
indicates that the pressures of the current round of the RAE may be
bringing a greater convergence of thinking on quality.
Interdisciplinarity beyond the creative disciplines has a positive effect on
quality and we have seen evidence in examples of research and our
questionnaire surveys that researchers engaged in interdisciplinary work
have fewer problems in meeting quality expectations.
In looking at the AHRC funding schemes, it seems evident from both
proposals and some of the outcomes evident in project files that the
research grants scheme has been successful in attracting an
increasingly confident and rigorous approach to research in ADA,
including practice-led research. The different disciplines have very
different approaches but we saw, in the examples examined, good use of
the AHRC/AHRB application framework to propose coherent valid projects.
Some examples of funded projects from the very early years of AHRB had
weaknesses that would not pass through the peer review gate today, and
that seemed to be welcome evidence of progress in researchers'
understanding as well as greater competition and strengthening of the
review process.
Other schemes have had more mixed results and we note that AHRC has
recently introduced changes which have strengthened their aims and
criteria.
undertaken for social reasons, to understand or influence attitudes and perceptions, or
it may be instrumentally aimed at identifying directions for future products through
observation of the effect of critical "prototypes"
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5. Conclusions
These conclusions draw mainly on the issues identifies in the preceding
chapter. We have not set out detailed arguments here since those will be
found above.
5.1 Scope and Quality of Practice-Led Research
We feel that, had such a review been conducted 5 years ago, the picture
would have been far less clear and confident. In the case examples
illustrated in 2.2 above we have found both a great breadth of work but
also clarity. While some of the academics concerned are still lacking
confidence in telling their story and setting it into the academic framework
the work itself is methodical, inquiring and making diverse contributions to
knowledge and understanding. In particular doctoral research is
demonstrating a great deal of new confidence.
AHRC has had an impact on this as shown by the developing quality of
work funded by the research grants scheme and the uptake of specialist
schemes for practice-led research as well as the effects of Doctoral
funding and research training schemes.
There seems to be a good deal of scope for practice led research to
extend its reach. The NESTA case examples show that there is a
relationship between the innovative work funded in the professional sector
and academic practice-led research and we see no reason why that
should not become more of a continuum. Some of the case examples also
illustrate the role of practice-led research in influencing domains beyond
our immediate disciplines, Jill Gibbon's engagement with political activism,
Sarah Wigglesworth's influence on educational policy and John Lindsay's
work on the relation between information design and sustainable cities all
demonstrate the potential for the creative disciplines to exert influence
through practice-led inquiry.
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5.2 Capacity
There are some capacity problems. The doctoral "production" rate is
slower than in most disciplines and is building on a very low base. This is
not helped by the limited number of experienced PhD supervisors,
especially as practise-led research requires a good deal of flexibility from
a supervisor if they are to navigate a sound route in the very complex
territory indicated by the case examples. There are no easy formulae.
The new postdocs represent a growing resource for advanced research,
teaching and critical practice but it cannot be taken for granted that they
will fit automatically into an academic environment that has not had to
accommodate them in the past. They may also present a difficult
challenge to those existing academics, often well-established and
productive people, who have not yet engaged with the research agenda.
5.3 Funding Schemes
We have noted some opportunities to improve the detail of AHRC
processes in ways that would encourage practice-led research and
ensure parity of treatment:
Some questions asked in application and monitoring forms, particularly
about outputs and dissemination, might be refocused to concentrate on
purpose rather than form.
It was also observed that the quality of practice, best understood through
direct inspection, is important in so far as it affected the quality of research
and referees and applicants may be helped by a more open approach to
the inclusion of visual material in applications.
5.4 Definitions of Research
While the AHRC definition of research was considered generally
appropriate we feel that there is a good case for investigating how our
understanding of output/contribution and the related dissemination
infrastructure might be developed in the light of the tensions between
explicit and tacit outputs described above (4.4). This is mainly a question
for academics in the disciplines but there may be value in seeking to fund
some research or events that develop and demonstrate approaches to
these issues.
Alongside this is a broader question, particularly for Fine Artists, of how to
balance the professional and academic worlds and how to be more
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
explicit about purposes and methods without undermining the tacit
qualities of their practices and contributions.
5.5 Infrastructure
There is no easily described infrastructure for supporting research in ADA,
especially when it comes to publishing. The situation is improving over
time but there is scope for specific initiatives to support the development
of the scholarly infrastructure. However the diversity and eclecticism of the
dissemination that does take place is also an indication of the richness
and interdisciplinarity of the field and should not be seen as a problem in
itself.
5.6 RAE 2008
The timing of this review was problematic in that material from RAE 2001
is largely out of date. The RAE 2008 panel for Art and Design have
indicated that they expect institutions to evidence that allows the nature
and contribution of practice-led research to be inspected and we
anticipate that this will lead to a good deal of new material coming onto
the public domain, directly or indirectly from the RAE. While we have been
able to establish a base of examples the next year should see many more
case examples becoming available, together with more up to date
statistics.
5.7 Other Observations
To summarise what we have learned from this review:
Practice-led research in ADA is a significant activity which is growing in
both doctoral and staff research. It has a positive effect on the culture of
academic departments and practitioner academics (arguably the great
majority of staff in ADA) often see it as the only way they are likely to
engage in research. As a result we view it as an important means of
stimulating the development of ADA as academic disciplines.
The ADA disciplines are relatively underdeveloped in comparison with
most research disciplines, with a high proportion of staff who lack
experience of research. Nevertheless there is a good deal of enthusiasm
and energy among the "RAE-active" staff which can be exploited.
Practice-led research is frequently interdisciplinary and this has been a
great strength, especially as it contributes a new dimension to the
disciplines that get involved. Interdisciplinary is also a problem in terms of
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
the conventional view of an academic field with a well-established
dissemination infrastructure. The diverse profile of ADA dissemination
defies metrics but is an indicator of the wide relevance of ADA research.
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Practice-led research in Art, Design & Architecture
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